Taming of the Wild

While the men worked inside, the ladies mostly worked outside, trimming shrubs and raking, tarping, and carrying leaves. (When we weren't watching the kiddoes or on kitchen duty that is!)

The front drive was definitely a major job!

5+ years of decaying leaves!

Which then had to be tarped and carried!

Our last load of leaves from the front drive!!!

These pictures can't give a complete perspective, but we probably tarped over a hundred loads of leaves and dumped all of them in one of these two VERY large piles!

We also trimmed the shrubbery around the house, although I didn't get much of that in pictures.

By Thursday afternoon we were getting rather tired of carrying leaves, so we decided to go play in (err, umm, clean up . . .) the creek for a change of pace! :o)

For the record, Jenny prefers clippers and loppers to weedwhackers. I lasted all of about 90-seconds with this one!

Now that was fun!

A New Front Door

In order to add a closet in the entry way, we had to remove the right side-light. That, coupled with the rather poor condition of the original door, meant we had the opoprtunity to replace it with a new one!

Our new door . . . before Bryan worked his magic and Janie used her paintbrush.

Doesn't Bryan's trim work look nice?!? :o)

Thanks for caulking and painting, Janie!

Yeah! You'd hardly even guess there used to be windows on the side!

(And yes, we know we still need to paint the door . . . ) :o)

So what happened inside?

Obviously we were doing something to generate a dumpster full of rubbish, so here it is. Enjoy the pics! (And if you're bemoaning the quantity, realize that there were lots more I didn't post! :o)

Time-lapsed photography will once again tell the story . . . one of the advantages of not posting all week!

Tuesday:

Kitchen/Living

Front entry/Hallway/Dining

Wednesday:

Thursday:

8 inches of concrete to drill through where the chimney used to be . . .

New beams for the kitchen floor

Friday:

New entry way closet (and a peek of the door!)

Saturday:

Installing new hardwoods in the kitchen and part of the entry way

Monday:

Drywall hung between the kitchen/living room

Down with the wallpaper!

Thank you, Grandma!

Didn't they do a beautiful job installing the new floors and matching them with the old? (Yes, we will be refinishing them all the same color.) :o)

Tuesday:

What a difference opening the walls up made!

Everything seems so much bigger and more spacious!