My New Front Yard~September 2010

Oh I do love the signs of progress! The huge difference it has made in my front yard without the tree! wow! I love how bright and sunny it is. I have a great deal of gardening to do now that it is all open. I also need to get the dead city tree out. I was promised a September tree replacement, and it was on the condition that i dig around the old tree and remove plant material as well as getting the old big huge Catalpa tree down! Which I did.

The next phase of front garden will hopefully be to dig up all the plants, I did get a good start on removing them, then the demolition and inside the house plans needed to be made, waited, and stewed about and waited some more! The weeds got big, and the grass growing in the front garden is just plain ridiculous! i could not get grass to grow in the back yard where grass needed to be, but man have i got it in spades in the front Garden! that is just so wrong.

I need to figure out where things are, mark the bulbs that come up in the spring, and then start over! I do love the tall cup and saucer plant that was a gift from a Garden Gates open woman. I do love my purple sand cherry shrub, and it needs to be cut back in the spring, as does the Forsythia, I want the two shrubs to be trimmed to the same size, and then I will hopefully get to rework the front porch and get painting next spring and summer! so many projects so little time. The tree down was a big one.....as well as the back yard tree clean out! a few more and I may actually get to grow veggies back there! fabulous. So many future projects for 2011.

August 2010

Moving right along! wow where has this half year gone? Still no sign of any movement or concrete (pardon the pun) projects or massive renos on the go!

I did find a good decent handy man that can fix a few of the bigger woes or temporarily patch those that will be ripped down! what a massive undertaking this house is! i hired irv to take out the excess trees, one Catalpa tree from the front yard and four or five junk trees in the back. I had the trees taken over the house at the back little addinsky in hopes of keeping the critters from eating and eating more of the roof and making themselves at home. Low and behold, the trees were gone and i looked out back while watering the side garden, and who should be staring back at me? mr and mrs big fat racoon! I was soooo ticked. how dare they live in my house. the roof was so rotted they just peeled back what they needed and made themselves cozy in the attic!

Here are pre tree removal photos and post tree removal photos! What a massive difference this has made to the front and back yard. The kind neighbors to the east were a little disappointed as it means there are fewer shade trees and it is less park like...i on the other hand am thrilled! I may actually get to have a vegetable patch in the back yard yet!

My New Upstairs Bedroom

This is my new lovely upstairs bedroom! I love the quiet not having the neighbors coming and going from their side door beside my bed! It is quite cozy and of course has zero for closet or clothes storage! This is rather frustrating to say the least. But I do have the door to close for sleeping and that is also a new perk!

I am quite enjoying my new bedroom upstairs and being off the main floor. My summer pillows and my Christmas pillows are of course at the ready!

The Reno is about to begin...

Not a moment too soon either! My October reno is now making it's way into a 2010 kick off! The rewiring will get started on January 8th, 2010! wow seems rather far away...especially since it originally kicked off by packing in September!

The plans have actually changed a tiny bit. A great friend suggested i close off the back door and have it go out thru the back thru the former bedroom. What a great idea. It adds a good three feet of cabinetry and makes the back wall of the kitchen seem bigger! I was really excited about. The next part of the project is making the order for the kitchen, for which i have to create a slightly more accurate plan. The contractor has done the exact meaures, and now the combination of his drawings, my pulled photo samples and ideas, and my sketches should come together as a fabulous exciting kitchen....

One Hundred Days of Doorway photos

OHHHH...and the reno get ready program continues! My kitchen is slowly being emptied, and for a kitchen that has no storage i sure do have a lot o' stuff in it! Wow!!

It seems the get ready process is hampered by logistics...do i tear it all up now? pack up and move up stairs, or do i wait til the electrician comes and gets going on the rewire as i continue the process of moving upstairs??? so many logistical questions. I definitely have much stuff that needs an interim home, and of course we have the lovely new fridge in the middle of the soon to be new kitchen! nice way to live don'tcha think? It is truly making me crazy, and it has yet to begin.

In an attempt to document by photo, and because i miss my photo a day last year, i have started to take photos standing in the main entrance door periodically, and as the reno gets more underway i will take more photos more often! the before and after are going to be brutally shocking!!!!

Fridge Roundup Day!

I could hardly wait to have the big dirty, moldy beast removed from the house! Oh my goodness it was truly disgusting! It was not quite finished defrosting after days of sucking energy and electricity from the power box!

I was told the fellows would be here between ten am and two pm. I got up early to wipe up the last of the water and to get the remains from the frosty unusable freezer pried out...and low and behold it was not quite ready! I put the coffee on, continued to make room for the dirty wet removal, tried some more....to no avail! After carefully weighing the odds, I determined the time frame was lose enough, they could not possibly arrive at the earlier end! Oh sooo wrong, of course since i was not ready the truck could be heard rumbling down the street at nine forty am!

Oh Oh Oh! What is a girl to do??? I said they were realllly early for the time frame, they should work for the cable company! So they come in, and say yep it is not quite done defrosting! One of the requirements is that it be totally defrosted...at least it did not say spotlessly clean! So they wrinkled up their noses, said oh well and worked away at the removal!

Oh what a very very happy day! So excited for the next leg of reno to be on it's way! Nice photos to boot! I have entered the beast in the fridge roundup contest~ the prize is 1500 dollars to a new fridge! I have the new fridge, and wow what a dream it is!

The Energy Audit

This was an interesting experience! I have a bunch of ummmm issues that are desperately in need of repair. The fellow doing the audit got it all set up, and then asked how many windows were still open as he was unable to get a vacuum or a decent read!

Oh my goodness, i said there was a hole in the back addinsky roof, did he want me to cover it? he goes out back to take a look and discovers that the back door does not lock, thanks to lying larry, and the hole is rather large, add to that that the dining room wall of lathe no plaster is gap to the basment, and and and! oh myyyyyyy....

So the end result since it is a beginning point that he is after, is that he has to fudge the numbers a bit! At first he wanted to use the neighbors read, however i kiboshed that since the neighbors house is in much better shape and a whole smaller. He said he would have to adjust them. He also went thru and explained where i needed to add insulation, how much rebate i could entertain getting back if i did the whole nine yards, and all about the new windows and doors and weather stripping. I was surprised to learn that his audit had nothing to do with appliance energy star rating, and keeping the old fridge plugged in would have no effect either!

I also learned this week, just after the energy audit that my fridge is actually not hard wired to the panel in the basement after all! that was kind of surprising. I was told both appliances were hard wired and when dad replaced the stove outlet, he said that both appeared to be the same shoddy connection!

Oh my this house is in such bad bad shape! By Christmas time i have high hopes that i will be decorating the main floor for a full out festive Christmas season...time will tell!