Trees

Even though our cherry tree wasn't dead, the landscaper did say it was dying and probably wouldn't last more than a couple years.  So we had him take it out and replaced it with two new ones - a zelkova for shade and a crape myrtle for color.  I've always wanted one of those! 

The crape myrtle is really tiny right now, but they do grow a lot more.  The zelkova (top picture) is just skinny.  Apparently there are a lot of zelkovas in our neighborhood but I'm not good at trees.

Landscaping

We hired a landscaper from Angie's List to fix the problems our other contractor left in the backyard.  This was connected to the county inspection, but it's not like we were planning to leave a giant rock pile in our backyard indefinitely.  Stupid neighbors.  :P  Anyway, the owner of the company came out and did an estimate and they started work the last week of September.  It only took them a couple days to clear out and level the backyard, put down a patio (which will probably be increase in size once our deck goes in next summer), replace the front walkway (my favorite new thing), and reseed the front and back yards.

Goodbye Stucco!

What do you do during a hurricane snow day?  Update your blogs!  :)  I actually did this home improvement project in August.  Someone in our neighborhood filed a complaint with the county that our backyard had a dying tree so when the inspector came, they made a list of EVERYTHING "wrong" with our property while admitting that our tree wasn't actually dying.  Don't get me started.  Anyway, they said the stucco on our porch roof was peeling off so it had to be completed scraped off.  Not sure how peeling stucco affects the county or our neighbors in any way, since you can't see it unless you're standing under it, but whatever.  I've been meaning to scrape it off for a while.  It didn't take too long - rocked out to my mp3 player and tried to avoid getting stucco in my nose.  :)

Goodbye Chicken Wire!

I don't why our previous owners thought this would be a good idea.  Maybe they wanted to fence in a dog or something.  Chicken wire is stupid stuff.  I'm not gonna miss it!  Chris bought a grinder to cut through the wire, but he ended up just using wire clippers and pliers after a couple posts.  The sparks from the grinder were fun though!

Electrical Panel

I'm not sure what to think of our contractor's electrician.  At first I thought he was just a bad speller...

But then Chris tried to find out if he could run the cable cord for our new kitchen TV through the ceiling of our downstairs bathroom and couldn't figure out which switch controlled the electricity anywhere downstairs, they were so incorrectly labeled...

So we did all of them ourselves, with lots of running up and down the stairs...

Meanwhile, after we figured all that out and Chris tried to fix the installation of the bathroom light so it wasn't crooked, we discovered the light fixture was the wrong size for the receptacle and, securely installed, metal was touching metal and our circuit kept grounding.  So now we need a new light.  :P

But our TV is installed, even though there's no cable running to it yet...

It's never-ending, I tell you what!

Screens

My bug protectors are in!  Chris installed all the screens in our new windows and sliding glass door.  The door was tricky cuz we had to unscrew the barrier preventing people from flying out of our kitchen from the second story.  I guess it's a good thing the contractors forgot to take their 12 foot ladder with them!

Drainage, Part 3

We've done so much home improvement this weekend, I don't even know where to start!  Chris actually took a couple days off work cuz he needed a break and wanted to get a lot of big things done.  So we started with drainage...again...

See that huge round cement block?  Footing from our old deck.  It took Chris two hours to maneuver it out!

We made it to the edge of our property, where things sort of drop off, so all the water should drain out of our yard now.  Chris did the ditch for the drainage out from under our foundation by himself.  I was getting devoured by mosquitoes, even with multiple applications of OFF.