What else is new?
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House painted this year. New roof last fall. New iron fence for side of property, and wildlife fence for back of property, both installed this year. New planting bed to go with the new fence, about 100'x8', and much of it now has plants. Installed the metal edging already, and once we finish the irrigation system, I will mulch the bed and install the brick mowing edge.
Took down four large walnut trees last year, removed eight or nine large pines that looked to be at the end of their longevity, and have five younger hackberry trees to remove to make room for my plans for the backyard. We are working with a landscape designer from a local nursery, and most of the backyard will be completely redone. The area behind the garage will remain a storage area for the boards sawn from the trees (so many boards!) and many things to be used in the backyard. We call the storage area the 'Back 40', because it's beyond the backyard.
The five younger hackberry trees will come down to make room for a greenhouse and my shed, which will abut the back of the greenhouse. Hubby will get his shed updated/refreshed, too. I must have my own shed. It's impossible to share with hubby. He moves my stuff!!! Then I can't find my stuff, and I waste time and patience trying. Yes, I shall have my own shed.
A word of advice: Don't move her shed stuff unless you are ready to build another shed, or you are willing to memorize exactly where you found her stuff before you moved it for whatever silly reason you had for thinking you should dare move it.
TLDR: Don't move her stuff.We have a very big and old house. so nothing is quick or cheap to get done. In case you are wondering, nobody died to pay for all this. We just decided to get it done, because I want to retire next year. I want to be retired for the fun part of all this, which really has already begun for me. I have my blue shovel sharpened for digging, and much digging has already been done this summer.
Ahhhhhhh!! I love to dig, plant, mulch, and all that kind of thing. It's relaxing and good exercise, and I love the results. I even like pruning the plants when they need it. It's like meditation. Our property had a few big trees when we bought it decades ago, and I have enjoyed making the property look good with landscaping. I do the digging, and hubby pays for the supplies. We both are happy in this arrangement.
Yes, I have more plans, and I roll them out to hubby verrrry gradually. I've found it works best that way. I mean, you should see the number of boards he has from all the enormous trees we had to cut down. He has his own lumber yard in the Back 40, and his lumber yard makes my plans look absolutely great to him. This is such a good system.
There's much more to tell, but you need a rest by now.
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What a cool property, no shortage of work there! Thanks for the updates.
We live in a neighborhood but whoever lived in this house first (about 20 years ago) spent a good penny on landscaping, which back then sounded great... but now, 20 years of untamed growth and we have BY FAR the most tree-filled lot in the whole neighborhood.
We are are barely on 0.3 acre and we have 3 river birch, 5 large maples, a dozen blue spruce or evergreens, Japanese lilacs, linton trees, dwarf lilacs, blue spruce bushes, dozens of day lilies, hostas, large arbor vitae, and so on! Anyway... to continue your theme, each week I cut the grass, but also tackle the pruning of 1-3 of these plants (tree, shrub, etc). Keeps me busy all summer, but I enjoy it... actually ripped out some really old five bark and other old shrubs and am replacing them with some Hicks Yew or Pyramidal Yew bushes soon since they do well in the shade.
You'd have fun if you visited, it's a small property but we've done a nice job refreshing, clearing out, re-mulching, and so forth....and get nice comments from those who visit, lots to keep me busy outdoors. My wife does the weeding, btw... but I do the rest. Each week our 90-gallon yard waste bin (like a trash bin) is full of branches or pruned vegetation.
A bit of a ramble, but there you go. For other projects, this fall I'm going to install slatwall in the garage, that'll be a nice functional and aesthetic upgrade, for sure. Might redo the kitchen countertops as well.
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What a cool property, no shortage of work there! Thanks for the updates.
We live in a neighborhood but whoever lived in this house first (about 20 years ago) spent a good penny on landscaping, which back then sounded great... but now, 20 years of untamed growth and we have BY FAR the most tree-filled lot in the whole neighborhood.
We are are barely on 0.3 acre and we have 3 river birch, 5 large maples, a dozen blue spruce or evergreens, Japanese lilacs, linton trees, dwarf lilacs, blue spruce bushes, dozens of day lilies, hostas, large arbor vitae, and so on! Anyway... to continue your theme, each week I cut the grass, but also tackle the pruning of 1-3 of these plants (tree, shrub, etc). Keeps me busy all summer, but I enjoy it... actually ripped out some really old five bark and other old shrubs and am replacing them with some Hicks Yew or Pyramidal Yew bushes soon since they do well in the shade.
You'd have fun if you visited, it's a small property but we've done a nice job refreshing, clearing out, re-mulching, and so forth....and get nice comments from those who visit, lots to keep me busy outdoors. My wife does the weeding, btw... but I do the rest. Each week our 90-gallon yard waste bin (like a trash bin) is full of branches or pruned vegetation.
A bit of a ramble, but there you go. For other projects, this fall I'm going to install slatwall in the garage, that'll be a nice functional and aesthetic upgrade, for sure. Might redo the kitchen countertops as well.
@89th A kindred spirit!! I do the weeding here, too, so your wife and I have that in common as well.
Our house was in dire straits when we bought it in '91. The house and the yard were in need of much work. There was no garage, not even a shed. We had to put on a new roof before we could even move into the house.
We have fixed ceilings on all three floors of the house, that does not include the basement or attic. We have three storeys. Every room has needed a great deal of work, including repairs or replacement of key elements.
We also had to completely take apart the wrap-around porch to replace and repair structural and aesthetic elements. We built support beams that extended out into wood-covered support divets in the front yard. The beams we made went from the front yard up to the porch roof of the first floor. The supports had to hold all the weight of the first floor porch roof, the second floor porch, the front part of the turret on the second floor, and part of the third floor. Hubby and I did all this ourselves, no contractor.
*Side note: While in the midst of the porch project, wearing our leather work belts to hold nails, hammers, etc., a guy parked in front of the house, walked up to us and asked if we would do a similar project for his front porch. He thought we were the contractor or a building company. I told him he wouldn't be able to afford us, and that we couldn't even afford ourselves!
*We removed all the porch pillars, the handrails and spindles, almost all the porch flooring, and some of the floor joists. What couldn't be repaired was replaced. For weeks, we had wooden planks across the front floor joists to get into the house through the front door. It was completely appropriate to talk like a pirate every day at our house at that time.
Besides the new roof way back then (last year, we replaced the roof again after over 30 years!), we also put in three central air conditioning systems, one for each floor of the house, with all the duct work retrofitted. We also had a double boiler system installed to replace the old single boiler that serves the original hot water radiator heating system. Hot water heat is awesome, BTW.
We had an addition added to a single story part of the back of the house. It was already just one storey there, and we bumped it out across the entire back of the house. That's where we built the new kitchen and a home office that hubbby made into a handy workshop, even though he has a larger workshop in the second floor of the garage.
The garage we had built has two storeys, with workshops for each of us. (Hubby has to be reminded that he doesn't get to make messes in my shop. I love him dearly, but hey, there are limits.)
Our house used to scare small children when we first bought it, but now they love it. It amazes me to hear little kids, and big kids, and adults, walking by on the sidewalk telling their friends or family, "I love that house."
I know just how you feel when you hear those nice comments about your house. It's pretty awesome, isn't it.
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We had our house painted this week as well. Nothing as elaborate as what you’re doing though. !!
@Mik We hired it done this time. It took a crew of four to six people over three weeks to get it almost done. That included both the house and the carriage-house style garage. We use five colors, but it's still very subdued compared to some of the wildly painted Victorian houses.
The painters are returning this fall to put the storm windows back in place, and to do some touch ups. Yes, we have the original windows and storm windows. Hubby is so proud of the little black bow-tie turn buttons I found for him to use with the storm windows. He paints them a shiny black so they stand out proudly.
We are total house geeks!
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Very nice to hear from you Brenda!
Walnut trees are interesting - when we moved in 2022 there was one in the front of the house which really constituted an existential threat to my skull. The nuts came down unexpectedly and violently, and they were everywhere. Apparently, I was expected to mow the lawn on a semi-regular basis, so it had to go. Also, it was touching the house.
Speaking of house upgrades, we've recently updated our kitchen. New floor, cupboards, sink and stove. I finally got to buy an induction stove which I've wanted since I was a kid (we don't have natural gas here, so it's the next best thing). Next is the dining room, which currently resembles a building site, and over the next 2-3 (or possibly 5) years we have to get somebody in to do the upstairs bathroom which the previous owners had decorated in a tasteful dark brown colour from the 1970's. This included the toilet, which has to be seen to be believed. Or not.
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Very nice to hear from you Brenda!
Walnut trees are interesting - when we moved in 2022 there was one in the front of the house which really constituted an existential threat to my skull. The nuts came down unexpectedly and violently, and they were everywhere. Apparently, I was expected to mow the lawn on a semi-regular basis, so it had to go. Also, it was touching the house.
Speaking of house upgrades, we've recently updated our kitchen. New floor, cupboards, sink and stove. I finally got to buy an induction stove which I've wanted since I was a kid (we don't have natural gas here, so it's the next best thing). Next is the dining room, which currently resembles a building site, and over the next 2-3 (or possibly 5) years we have to get somebody in to do the upstairs bathroom which the previous owners had decorated in a tasteful dark brown colour from the 1970's. This included the toilet, which has to be seen to be believed. Or not.
@Doctor-Phibes
Oh, yes, walnut trees! They are both majestic and messy. I grew to seriously dislike them and their nuts. They also create juglone, a chemical most other plants hate and refuse to be near.I don't miss any of the walnut trees we removed. A couple were at the stage of losing limbs, and near the garage, so it was necessary to take them down. These were roughly 150 years old, and they were enormous, much too big for us to handle.
The power company took down another walnut near a power pole on the other side of our property. That was a sweet deal to have them take it down. Hubby got to have more boards, and we did the clean up of branches and such.
My 1991 pickup truck is still running great, and it's a 3/4 ton with an lined 8-foot bed. It knows the way to the brush dump by heart, and she is eager to go with a full load of tree debris. We could not do all the brush and branch removal without her. I still love
my truck, Sally.She's still agile, and she can step right down from the road behind our property to get to the Back 40. The state DOT has a right of way there, but we own it. If Sally wants to drive down from the road onto our land, I just let her. She's careful and there's plenty of room for her to get around back there. A gal's got to have plenty of room with an extended cab and an 8-foot bed, but she's still got the moves.
Sally still loves to go fast, too. For an old gal, Sally still has the power and speed to get into trouble. I try to keep her in line, so she doesn't get caught speeding. She's only been caught once, back in 2006. That hasn't stopped her from trying. I pat her on her dashboard to let her know she's still loved. She's still beautiful, too, and always will be in my eyes.
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@brenda you've essentially "built" the house yourselves at this point, that is really remarkable. I'd like to do a fresh painting of the exterior (trim and garage doors), since we face east and a lot of it is sun baked at this point. When we moved in in 2021, we had painters repaint the big rooms but I painted most of the bedrooms and bathrooms. Felt good finishing the last room to be painted (the kids' bathroom), so that chapter is over. I don't particularly get pleasure from painting, so good riddance.
@Doctor-Phibes The previous owners also had "heavy" taste (really dark/heavy curtains, lights, etc) so we've slowly swapped those all out. It's funny what looks good to one owner, and not another...
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Here are some before/after of our back yard (starting far left corner and going clockwise until the stone steps) from 3 years ago when we did the first refresh. Yes, not on purpose, but indeed the "after" benefits from a blue sky and grass that has turned green... The biggest changes were:
- Fresh mulch (northern white cedar)
- Removal of satellite dish
- Prune/removal of many trees/bushes
- The 2 large lilac bushes at the end near the stone steps I just removed this year... major PITA (hard to prune at nearly 10-feet, and grew inwards to basically scrape people walking up/down the steps), instead I planted bluegrass feather grass along the steps, and will be putting in a limelight hydrangea tree in that right spot
- Also cool, we "discovered" (like finding an old ancient roman road) 3 decorative but functional drainage paths of river rock, you can see one of them clearly in the 2nd pic
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Two other smaller projects, thanks for letting me share in your thread @brenda !
The two large arbor vitae near our gate, they grow about 8-10" each year, so I've been pruning it so that it's creating an archway, kind of fun. The first pic is what we saw in 2021, healthy but couldn't access gate without getting brushed by both, and the last pic I have is from 2 years ago, I'll have to take another one after I prune it this month as the archway is fully connected from the height 7 feet to about 13 feet above.
The other project is removing daylilies and replacing them with black eyed susans. Love that plant (HATE the bunnies that eat the stems, though!!). Even put the kids to work.
And yes, this is what saturday's look like these days...long gone are the golfing mornings... dunkin and tall ornamental grass from the hardware store
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Here's our bedroom. The 'before' is a bit of a shocker. The previous owners were heavy smokers, and there was honeycomb in the AC unit.
The deck. When we moved in, it wasn't really safe to walk on.
