Timber- taking down a dead tree

There's been a pine tree next to the Well House that we've been keeping our eyes on.  At least half of it's branches were dead, and the others weren't looking so great either.

You can kind of see a part of it on the left side of this old photo- although you can't see the whole thing (and it's half-deadness), you can see how close it is to the well house roof.

We were worried that if it fell down, it would damage the slate roof (that would be an unneeded expense!)  But if it was able to be saved, we wanted to keep it.  So, we trimmed it up, and spent two years watching & waiting for it to perk up.  We've finally decided it was time to take it down.

Mike started this while I was at work, and forgot to take a before photo... so that's why we have the old photo above!

When I arrived home (and ran to get the camera), it was already down...

I was relieved that Mike remembered to move the bird bath & iron bench that we had out there.
The top of the tree came mighty close to the picket fence!

Next spring we'll work on shaping up the flower beds around there.  I think I'd like to put window boxes on the four windows, or at least the two in front.

Catching Up- May/June 2014

Wow- two months since my last post!  Life's been hectic lately... and the blog fell to the side for a bit.
I hope that I can get back into a rountine with it!

Here are some random things we've had happening with the house...

Mike built doors for the closets under eaves of the media room.

They had to be custom built, since the openings were an odd size.

I've primed them, Mike got hinges and hung them, and now I need to paint them.

We also bought the hardware- just a basic satin nickle knob for each.




I also added this shelf up there... I'm still fussing with what goes on the shelves.  For now it's photo albums, blankets, a couple of old Atari games, and empty buckets/storage bins.






I put together these mason jars of old thread spools and buttons.  They'll look great in a laundry room (some day!)








The fruit trees that we planted last year are doing good!
We lost one of them, so replaced it with a new nectarine tree.

Most exciting is that the peach tree has three peaches on it!  They are rather tiny, but a good start!!!!

Other items...
We've been moving forward with the plans for the extension.  Of course, after living in the house for a few years and mulling over the existing drawings, we now want to change some things.  I'll post about that once we've met with the architect again.