A welcome back surprise and remodel update

When we got home from Arizona, we were greeted with this little surprise!

I guess we are going to have new neighbors for sure this year! Workers have been busy leveling, building up the property, and just this week the foundation guys were out there getting everything ready for it to be poured.  It'll be interesting to see how the whole process works out.  

Meanwhile, back at our house...

...the Sheetrock is being hung!  Our rooms are actually beginning to feel like rooms, which is a huge improvement over a gigantic kitchen-bedroom-not yet bathroom-bedroom-hallway we had going on before.

Today, I actually finished all the nailing while Mark did some other things (the pictures above do not reflect this). My right hand is stiff and I've developed a nice callous on the heel of my hand - ouch!  But that was a big accomplishment for me, and it allowed Mark to do some other "prep things" for mudding and taping, which may begin as soon as tomorrow.  I'll be showing pictures of our completed Sheetrock tomorrow, along with any other progress we make.

Wondering if we've made any "finishing touch" decision lately?  Well, we actually have! We've decided on the style of our new interior doors.  They will look a lot like these:

 

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We decided to go with a more early to mid-century style.  They are special order, so they are a bit more expensive, but I really love them so Mark agreed to it. What a nice guy!  I've always wanted these doors...now I'll have them!

Our ongoing side project

Make that ongoing outside project!

It's obvious from previous pictures that our landscaping is a wee-bit overgrown.  Well, not long after we moved in, Mark took on the grass and mowed, which actually made a world of difference, but there is much, much more to be done.

Grabbing some gloves and my handy pruners, I first tackled the 8' rhododendron in our front yard and then the ... bushy tree thing next to it. You can kind of see our first brush pile building up behind it.

The bushy tree thing next to it took forever to prune!  There were so many dead branches underneath (and still are) and they were all super skinny and you didn't know where they connected - ahhh - it was the worst!  Anyway, we then tacked the Tarzan vines that entwined one of our fir trees out front.

You can still see what we couldn't reach without a ladder. Those things are tough! (Check out growing brush pile #2!) We're going to have to get out a really tall ladder to finish off those vines.

This evening we started in on the sticker bushes that were surrounding the 5 or so mailboxes at the end of our driveway. Despite a few sticks (Mark got one right in the neck!), we managed to come out on top and removed most of them. They really don't stand a chance against me and my trusty pruners!

Underneath everything, we found a beautiful Japanese maple!  It's actually pretty huge and was getting overtaken by those pesky sticker bushes...but we took care of that problem (see scary photo of me above). Now we only have to remove some Ponderosa Pine branches above it so that it gets a wee bit more light and then it will actually be visible to us and people who drive by! (Sorry for the dark picture.)

A little down, a lot more to go, but it's looking better all the time!