Trees

Well, I can always count on Jennifer to give me a hard time if I go too long without making a post, so thanks to her, here's the latest.

Yesterday we had a crew of tree-service people here from about 8:15 - 5:45 to take down 8 trees. Our backyard is so wooded that we barely get any light in the back rooms at all, particularly the kitchen. we're planning to eventually cut down quite a few more, and transform the backyard from woods to lawn-with-large-shade-trees-scattered-about. These 8 though, are too close to the house, leaning toward the house, hanging over the house, etc. for Jeff to take them down, hence the tree service. Yesterday they got 4 trees totally down and all the limbs and about half the trunks off of 2 more. They're coming back today to finish up. They hauled a truckload of wood out with them when they left, but here's how our yard looks:




The other project we have going on now is the screened porch. We were really happy to have a screened porch when we moved in, but of course, like the rest of the house, we couldn't be happy with it as is. The 14 year old pressure treated lumber had never been stained/ painted, and was kind of mildewed and very dirty. The screens themselves were aluminum and bent/ torn in places, the doors were rotted at the bottom. etc. So Jeff took out all the screens, pressure washed the whole thing, and we're in the process of priming it right now. I took all 10 million nails out of the little 1x1 strips that hold the screens in :o) Once it's painted, we'll put new nylon screens and new doors. Another thing we decided to do while we have it taken apart was to rearrange the doorway. It used to have double doors out to the deck way to the left as you walk out onto the porch from the kitchen, but we're planning to have the grill just to the RIGHT as you walk out, so Jeff took a portion of the rail from the right and used it to fill in part of the existing doorway, and built a new doorway to the right. So now we have 2 single doorways instead of one double and we're really happy with the new traffic pattern. That description probably makes no sense, but in this picture you can see the old doorway is to the right (cause i'm facing the house :oP) and the new one is to the left. The grill will be against the house at the very left edge of the photo:



Also, we're very excited about painting the ceiling blue :oD here's the first coat (couldn't wait to try out the color):



Well, I think I still owe nasty carpet pictures.... we'll see if I ever get to that!