Tuesday, February 17, 2015

More house projects!

Last Friday was a big day in our house!  We replaced the 50+ year old fence AND the 30 year old sliding door!  

First, the door...


The old one was the original door from when the previous owners put the extension on - in 1985!  The cold air that seeped through was unbelievable, and it was heavy and hard to open.  It wasn't close to being energy efficient! 







YAY!  It looks so much better now!  And it's at least 10* warmer in the sunroom now.  It was surprising how hard a 3-panel door was to find, and how freaking expensive it was!


Then, the fence...  We had hoped to get a few more years out of the fence, but it was really starting to lean and fall in places...it was also original to the house, from the 60s!   Also, we found that doing this in the winter was much better than waiting until spring - we got better pricing and much faster installation.





It came down really pretty quickly, but lots of pieces broke off as they were loading it onto the truck to haul away...it was almost disintegrating in their hands.


We also decided that we were glad to be putting a pretty fence back up - the back yards around us aren't the prettiest...




Big new door!  We went with the 48" and I'm so glad - hauling leaves and other junk out of the back yard will be so much easier now with the bigger gate.


Finished!


 We decided to go with pressure treated wood instead of the cedar.  We just don't see us being in the house long enough to justify the additional cost.  



This is the last of the projects for a little while.  We have some serious landscaping to do in both the front and the back this spring...but I think that's going to be a lot of sweat equity!





We used MC Fence and Deck  for the fence and the door is a Soft-lite Kingsroyal.

Monday, February 9, 2015

Now you see them...

We have never loved the 2 big crepe myrtles at the front door.  You may remember, last winter I attempted to at least trim them to a more manageable size...   It didn't really help.  They are huge, block the house, and are messy.  Plus...they just aren't terribly pretty when it comes to crepes.  I love crepe myrtles, but these just weren't doin' it for us...


We had talked about moving them, hoping they'd be a little more tame, but it just wasn't happening.  M got a chain saw for Christmas...and put it to good use last weekend!!



Amazing the difference!


M dug up the stumps, too.  We have big plans for the front yard and removing a few more plants and extending the grass back a bit, and adding back in a few plants that are more evergreen, colorful, and not as random!  


We can't get over the difference - and don't know why we waited so long to make the change!