Stumped

Day 1 of the landscapers' work... they dropped off a tractor to get the big stump out of the backyard from the tree we cut down.

We now get to move on to getting the walkways put in!

Storm Trouble

Although we were able to get the half-dead tree down before the storm arrived on March 2nd, we ran into trouble from the pine trees.

The first hit was a big limb that came down on the Well House roof.  Here's a photo from during the storm...

The roof on the building is 100 years old and slate.  Not going to be fun to get that replaced! 

Here's a photo of it from behind the Well House... you can see the pointy branch on the pine tree, where the limb broke off.

The next hit was a huge pine tree that was behind the big barn.  It sideswiped the building- luckily not a direct hit, but it did knock it off kilter.

Another storm was scheduled to be coming through (will spring ever arrive?!?), so we had to quickly get the hole in the roof covered so it doesn't mess up the recently finished gym!

We have our work cut out for us... weekends full of chopping those trees up and trying to schedule the insurance guy, roofer, and a structural engineer.  

This was not a part of our spring plans!

Clearing the Way

I've got a bit of catching up to do!
Before the landscaper could begin work, we needed to take care of a few things back there.  So, I bring you back to February...

Unfortunately, there was a tree that needed to come down.  It was rotted on one side, and we had been trying to get it healthy with trimming it over the past few years, but it was too far gone.

I was holding my breath as it came down, but Mike's gotten quite good at landing it right where he likes.  He took the rest of the afternoon to chop it up.  That will be good firewood for next year.

The forecast had a Nor'Easter coming in this week, so we really wanted to get the tree down and cleaned up- mission accomplished!

Planning the Backyard!

We have finally gotten around to doing some real work on the backyard!
We hired a landscaper to come up with a plan for us.

Our wish list included:

- Pavillion for a dining area

- Pathways and colonial style gardens

- An area in the center of the gardens for a sundial 

Below is the first draft that he came up with.  The house is on the left, the well house is on the right.  The structure in the middle would be the new pavilion.

It was a good start, and got us thinking more about how we'll use the space.  

We decided that we needed the following changes:

- Reduce the lower level patio area

- Move the pavilion a bit further away from the house (so that when you looked out the kitchen window you weren't looking right into it)

- We didn't like the stone wall coming off the back of the house

- We wanted a pathway to enter the middle of the back yard from the driveway

- Need a fence for the dog

- We wanted less of the lawn area, more gardens.  We have so much grassy area with the field, we don't need that in this section of the yard.

Some of the challenges of the space are:
- We want to keep the privacy fence (shown running along the top of the plans) but it is currently running on an angle, following the property line.  We'd like to square it off a bit to make this area of the backyard appear more symmetrical.
- The yard slopes down to the driveway.  We have to fill in some of it, but will still have to have steps in the walkway going up to the pavilion. It would be too steep to just have walkways.


Here's where we ended up for the hardscape...

And here's the latest plan that includes all of the plantings...

Before & After- Well House/Gym

Wow- we took quite a bit of a blog break!

We've been busy the past few weeks with getting Well House turned Gym into shape!

Back last year, we had started to get it set up, but two weeks ago we decided to get in there with paint and really make it a space for the boys to work out in.

The first thing we had to do was get the electrician in to run the electric inside the walls, and then demo all of the old electrical tracking that was affixed throughout the room.

We also demo'd the little corner cabinet that contained an old breaker box, which was removed.  We decided to keep the shelves for some open storage.

The electrician also installed a ceiling fan (which you can kinda see in the after photo below...)

Then we painted the ceiling and walls.  Both have bead-board running horizontally- it was kinda a pain to get the paint in there!

For the walls, we used the same "Wet Pavement" gray that we used in the master bedroom.

We painted the well/pump "closet" gray, so that it would blend in better (that's the big brown paneled box in the left side of the before photo!).

And the built-in shelf got a fresh coat of white, with yellow along the back.

Here's a close up of the shelf:

We decided to decorate with the kids' wrestling trophies & medals.

For the medals, we painted and hung a board along one wall and used finishing nails to hang the medals from.  I spaced the nails evenly the whole way across, and split the Gold, Silver & Bronze medals into groups so that they can hopefully add more!

Here's the view looking in from the doorway:

I hope to add a mirror on the blank wall.

Here's a reversal of the room, looking back at the door:

We also framed & hung a photo of Team USA wrestler, James Green- a wrestler that the boys admire.

We still have some odds & ends to finish up, but we've already been out there getting our workouts in!  I think we'll get a tv to hang behind the weight bench, and we're also checking out thin wall radiators that can hang (since there's no heat in there for winter-time).

During my blogging break, I wasn't organizing my photos... so I'm going to get back in the habit of doing that and try to update with more that we've been working on in the past 10 months!  

I really do have to get back into the swing of it, since there were several times that I've come back here to check on things like when we bought our fridge (which is on the fritz!), or how high the water was in the bomb shelter when we moved in (there's a project underway with that!)  

So it's been great having the blog to go back and figure out these things!