Where have all the trees gone?

October 14, 2010

Well hello, blog readers. Before starting, we have to wish a HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my mom Charla Snowden. She is.... well, I won't tell you or she'll kill me ;-)

Anyway, here is what's going on at the house. First, the deck is starting to be rebuilt. Woo hoo! This involves anchoring some cement blocks into the ground so that the deck is more supported and the strain is taken off the house (or at least that's what Alok said).

Soon to be cement filled block


Beginning of the deck. Those white circles are cement blocks that will connect to the deck


View of the part of our new walkway

We are still waiting to repair the siding, so here is the current look at the front of our house:




Alok stopped by to supervise



In good news, we had the front of our house treated for termites. The rest will be treated when the rest of the soil is spread out/the tree stumps are removed.


The darker area is where the treatment (aka poison of some kind) was injected

Speaking of tree stumps, a few more trees came down on the side of the house. Again, here is the before:




Here is the after:

There were trees here previously. Two others against the house were taken down. No worries tree lovers, we will replant as we can :-) (We're just taking down ones that are too close to others to let them grow or trees that are touching the house)


New southeast side of the house view. Notice where the siding is different to your far left? That is where the air conditioning unit went into the parlor with the sheep wallpaper. See the board under the window? That was where another air conditioning unit went under the window and through the wall. Lovely.


New view from flagstone patio to the front street


Alok kicked this stump, which I thought was in the ground, and it fell over. I guess it was detached from somewhere else.


East side view

What do you see here (hint, look down):


Our front door has been leveled out, at least from the outside. Here it is before:

Notice the major slant that is now fixed

Now the patio door won't close, so it's now in our foyer:

No, that picture is not slanted, it is level. That is how slanted the patio door was!

Here is the view from our front door of the start of the new deck:




We also had a few new purchases, seen here:




A small, pedestal sink for the bathroom under the stairs. We haven't started it yet, but this was a great deal at Bayview (I was too lazy to take the top out of the package)


A chair and loveseat that we found at a yardsale. It is actually in good condition, but needs to be reupholstered.

That's about all for now. Alok's wonderful bosses gave him tomorrow off so that he could attend a 3 day seminar on how to restore your old, double hung windows. We'll let you know how that goes!

Jessica