Things have been slowly happening around here. Nothing too exciting, but still important nonetheless. Remember this post where I talked about things slowing down because of our expenses? Well, we are trying not to let that completely stop us. So, this past few weeks has been all about accomplishing tasks that cost no moolah. So far, so good!

Let's start with the back yard. Jonathan has been itching to cut down the two trees beside our garage. We would love to plant a veggie garden there possibly. Or maybe put an outdoor pen for the dogs. Regardless of what happens, the trees weren't really in a great spot and were always dropping sap on our cars. That, plus the ideas mentioned above made us decide it was time they were gotten rid of. So, Jonathan cut them down.

Can you see him climbing in the middle of the picture? 

He started by limbing the entire tree. This allowed him to make his way to the top using the tree stubs.

Then he dropped the top quarter of the tree.

Then the next quarter.

Oh and I might add that while he was working on the tree, I was loading the trailer with branches. We probably did a half dozen loads of branches and then two loads of just the trunk.

Finally, the last half of the tree was dropped. Sorry for the horrible pictures, it was actually pretty dark out, so this is the best I could do.

 And here is the wedge that he cut out. Pretty impressive.

Jonathan cut down the other tree this past weekend. So, both are down. One has been hauled off and gotten rid of. And the other one is waiting for us to have a free weekend to load it onto the trailer. Next step: making plans for next summer. I'm still crossing my fingers that the garden will work. 

The other project that Jonathan worked on is inside our house. Do you remember our less than complete bathroom corner? You can see it here in this old progress picture. 

Well, we have been trying to figure out what to do with that corner, because we didn't think we had enough beadboard to finish it. Turns out, the only problem was that there wasn't enough base trim to finish it. So, we just decided to make the spot that doesn't have trim, be in the corner so it could easily be covered up. In the future we have plans to fix it, but for now, its fine the way it is. 

See the little corner peeking out under the sink? Yea, that is all the base trim that we are missing. ARGH!! Oh well. I'm just glad that the rest of the wall is done! Yes, I snapped this picture a bit early, so Jonathan hadn't put up the last piece of trim, but don't you worry! Stick around tomorrow and you will get to see it all completed!!!

Geiger Cleaning Week: Day 1

As promised, here is our day one post of

   

Today, I will show you some of the yard work we did this past weekend--and let me tell you, things are looking pretty shnazy around here.

On Saturday, Jonathan and I had a majority of the day to work in the yard. Our goals were to:

        -clear out all of the garden beds
        -take out all of the bushes along the right side of our house
        -clean up the side yard tree
        -any general trimming or clearing that needed to be done

To give you an idea of what we started with, I will share with you some before pictures. But, first, I want to explain a few things. When we purchased this house, outside work was really the last thing on our priority list. We figured that we would get to it eventually and that is why we haven't done anything before now. Doing yard work at the end of the the summer may seem a bit counterproductive, but our goal is to clean everything up so that next year we can start off with a fresh slate.

Let me tell you, we had a lot of work on our hands. Both of our neighbors have told us multiple times that the yard has not been touched in "years." And I can attest to the fact, that this has got to be true. After working in our yard for 7ish hours on Saturday, we definitely need at least one more full day of work, if not two. The amount of dead leaves, rubbish, and overgrown bushes will never cease to amaze me. To be honest, I was a bit naive to believe that in one day, we could have everything cleaned up.

We did end up doing a bunch of things, but also decided to cut a few corners. In the interest of  time (and to contemplate if we want to keep them or not) we just cut back a majority of the bushes that surround the house. We will decide next year if they will be ripped out or not. We also worked on getting rid of all of the ivy that has overtaken our house. I will forever hate the stupid stuff. Why people plant it is beyond me. Lastly, we also took out the old lamppost that didn't work anymore and made sure to trim up a couple of trees that were starting to look worse for the wear.

Without further ado, here is our spruced up and clean yard!

Stay tuned tomorrow for our kitchen reveal! The Geiger Cleaning Week: Fall Edition is in full swing people!

Side-by-Side

Sidenote: Sorry for the lack of posts around here this week. I have just been a little too busy and feeling a bit uninspired. I promise, next week I will be back into the swing of things! 

Wanna take this outside? 

No, no. I'm not going to beat you up, but I would like to show you something that Jonathan and I worked on last weekend. 

In the five months that we have owned this house, we have not touched a single thing on the outside. Well, unless you consider "revamping" the stairs. But, we really shouldn't count that. Needless to say, the outside of our house is still looking a bit neglected.

The gardens are completely overgrown, there is a huge-almost-as-tall-as-me-huge pile of sticks next to our garage, and don't even get me started about the state of the shrubbery. I may just cry. 

But things changed a bit last Friday. Jonathan surprised me by coming home, from work, early!--this rarely happens.  His first words were, "What do you need help with."

Yes, I have the best husband. 

No, you can't have him. 

Yes, I have bewitched him to think that I'm the best wife in the world. 

No, I'm not proud of that. :)

Anyways, I honestly didn't have much for him to help me with, so I told him to go ahead and spend the rest of the afternoon doing what he wanted to. So what did he decide to do? Well only something full of manly-ness of course. 

He decided to clear out the area in front of our garage. 

At the time, a small tree and two clothesline posts were occupying the space. I loved the idea of having a place to hang my clothes and the tree was pretty, but they were in a horrible spot. With a large truck, a trailer, and my car all needing to be parked in that area, things were getting pretty tight. Plus, it isn't very fun to back out onto our road because it is narrow and we live just up from a bend--so you can't see a car coming until it is on your tail. All that to say, a bit of extra space would be much appreciated.

We are also planning on re-graveling the driveway this summer. In preparation for that, Jonathan and I wanted to rip out the horribly placed greenery and poles so that we could gravel right to the doors of our garage. We will call this 'step one' of  'operation improve driveway.'

First, Jonathan dug out the pole closest to the tree. The poles were embedded with cement, but we decided to attempt to save them. Buying new poles would have been pretty expensive, so Jonathan just dug around the cement and we wiggled it free. We decided to store them behind the garage until we can figure out a better place for them.

Then came tree-time. Jonathan was all excited about this part. First, he dug around the tree a bit to loosen things up. Then, he attached her to his truck.

Pulling out tree with truck = man adrenaline rush. Or just something fun to do on a Friday afternoon. Needless to say, she came out with no problem. I have to say, there was a moment of panic, when I thought that he was going to pull the tree into my car, but I didn't need to worry. He knew what he was doing. :)

After that whole ordeal, we cut her into pieces and added her to the pile-o-sticks beside our garage.

Finally, it was time for the last pole. This one was a little trickier. There were tons of roots around the cement so it wasn't as easy to dig around it. Jonathan tried to pull it out with his truck--that didn't work. We tried to lift it by grabbing onto it and pulling together--that didn't work. Finally, our nice neighbor came over and between him and Jonathan they were able to wiggle it free and pull it out of the hole. She too was then laid-to-temporary-rest behind the garage.

Now, the area behind our house and in front of our garage is looking pretty spiffy. There are a few holes that we need to fill, but we can at least park our cars side-by-side. Plus, the whole backing-out-of-the-driveway-thing has been remedied. Now, there is plenty of space for both of us to turn around first.

In short: we love it. 

Now, we have to come up with an answer to a way more complicated question: Where to place the clothes line? 

Our Ghetto-tastic Stairs

When contemplating what I should post about today, I realized that we haven't updated you on the progress outside our humble abode. We haven't done too much, but there were a few things that Jonathan had to throw together ASAP.

See, there is this thing called house insurance. Let me tell you, they can be a major pain-in-the-kiester. I understand the need to make sure a person's property is safe, but come on! The "problems" on the outside of our house have been there for years--why do we have to change them now? Oh that's right, because we purchased the home and had to have homeowners insurance because of our loan. And when you get a new insurance policy, they show up and inspect the house that you purchased that probably hasn't been inspected since the 1950s when those stairs were put on and might have actually been level at that point...so they show up and tell you all the things that have to be corrected asap that you don't really care about. Whew, sorry for the rant (and horrible grammar), I just had to get that our there! :)

But really, couldn't we just throw some yellow caution tape up and call it a day? --Well maybe that wouldn't be a good alternative...our house would have looked like a crime scene! Ha! I doubt she (yes I have decided our house is a female) would have looked this sexy wrapped in caution tape:

{picture source}

Anyways, we were definitely lucky and honestly I really don't have any beef with our insurance company...they are really just doing their job. They told us that all we needed to do was fix our front stairs and put up a railing on both sets of outside stairs.

The problem was, we didn't want to invest a lot of money into this. The outside of our house is very low on our priority list. Basically we didn't want to spend too much money bringing her up to insurance standards as most of our money is going to renovations on our bedroom and bathroom. See the set of stairs to the left in the above picture? Here is a close up:

Well we plan on getting rid of them entirely and blocking off that door. We would like to turn the door into a window that matches the rest on the sun porch. Realistically there is no reason for that door when you have a front and back door. Plus,the sidewalk leading to it just breaks-up the front yard. We would be better served by a nice sidewalk to the front door instead.  

We didn't want to spend a lot of money on the front railing and stairs either. Eventually we would like to rip off the front entryway and redo it. When Jonathan was fixing the stairs (they weren't level at all) he realized that they were built and then just set into place. Perhaps they were a quick fix at one point? As he lifted them off, he found that there was a huge root that has protruded from the ground causing the stairs to lift and become off kilter.

That whole dark green set of stairs was just sitting there at a horrible angle. Dangerous to say the least. So Jonathan resolved that issue by building a concrete base under the bottom of the front stair and then attaching them with a 2x4 to the porch.  He also added the bricks to make the first step-up not so big. Finally, he brought it up to the insurance company's standard by installing a railing made with more 2x4s. The end result? Our ghetto-tastic stairs.

Definitely safer. Definitely completely cheesy and horrible looking. Our house now makes a fantastic first impression. She is proud of the silver bling she be sportin'. It's like the silver tooth in the front of her mouth or the classic rolled up right pant leg. Maybe its the do-rag to her bald head or the gold chain around her neck sporting a giant dollar sign. Either way, she is making a downright dreadful first impression.

Oh and to top it off, here our the side stairs with their new bling as well.

Let's just say that all of this is a temporary, inexpensive fix. We cannot wait to make her look pretty and sophisticated again.

What have you had to do as a temporary fix to your home? Was it as ghetto-tastic as ours?