Yardwork

Here's what's been going on here.

Our lemon tree is finally growing fruit. I hope that this is just the beginning of a healthy relationship. I love lemons...and I keep stealing them from my mom's tree. So if this poor tree can be revived, then I will be more than ecstatic.

We relocated our herbs and they are so much more happy here! They now live next to the lemon tree. Yay for fresh herbs every night. I can't wait until they really take off.

Our mint is quite happy and out of control, actually. I have been enjoying mint tea though. Time to trim this guy back though.

Grass is starting to grow where we (meaning Sam) removed the old rotting deck. 

It's hard to keep our backyard looking great...constant changing, moving one pile of dirt here, shoveling sand there. Under the tarp is all the sand I moved from the front of the house. The bricks were placed on top of it.

All the bricks I moved from the dirt patch (pictured below) in the front to the side of the house.

 Look how green our new grass is growing in! Sam has repositioned sprinklers to get maximum watering. We also seeded some of the patchy parts. So exciting to see it growing in so great.

Today we planted some bushes and flowers in the front. I am so excited! With the sun positioned right behind the house, I couldn't get a good picture of what we did today. So that will come later.

Whole House Fan

On Thursday we got heat in the 100s. It was 84 degrees downstairs, hotter upstairs, and even hotter outside. So we drove down to Lowes and picked up a whole house fan. Sam started in the morning on Thursday and hoped that he could be at class by 1pm that afternoon. Ha!

 Welcome to our attic. What the...? Why is there a fan up here? After a good cleaning it actually became a new best friend in this heat!

Hello broken duct work. No wonder the kids' room was so cold during last winter!

Not sure that those wires should just be sticking out there.

After assessing the layout for possible placements of the fan, we decided to go with the ceiling in the hallway outside the bathroom upstairs. That was the easy part. Actually installing it there was a whole other story. 

Our joists were not the standard 16 inches apart, nor were they parallel. So Sam needed to build a frame first. I could go on and on about all the issues we had. The lumber used to build our joists were not standard measurements. Electrical wires in random places. Duct work needing to be torn out (just created another job - but needed to be done anyways). And the heat just added to it. It was about 500 degrees up there. 

This job was my least favorite we have done. AND I WASN'T EVEN DOING ANYTHING...mostly just there to help Sam. It was just hot, messy, and frustrating. I much prefer being outside doing hard yard work. Once Sam opened the ceiling opening, the house got about twenty degrees hotter. I felt the heat wave rush in.  That and all the drywall and insulation dust...yuck. That dust was everywhere upstairs!

That was about as far as we got after day one. Sam was so hot and exhausted. Needless to say, he did not get to class.

We were blessed with better weather (cooler) the day we completed our house fan installation. Sam had to make a platform for the fan to sit on, put some insulation stripping on it, put finishing nails in the drywall up into the frame, and do the electrical.

The electrical required that we first figure out how our electrical is set up. Flipping breakers on and off, walking all around the house, we finally decided where the switch should be placed. 

View from inside

Sam even bled for this project

Cutting into the wall in the upstairs closet, switch installed

After a practice run, it was time to finish everything up. 

Woohoo! That was a killer. I am glad it's done and can't wait to actually try it out. Of course it has cooled way down since we installed it. :) Good job, honey!

Side projects: Since Sam was up in the attic, he also put a new junction box for our bedroom fan. Now we can actually turn on our ceiling fan in our bedroom without it falling down on us. Yay!

I also finally finished the stairs (caulking the side trim)...that only took forever.

 Next project: Order and install baseboards upstairs! And tile bath/shower, install new floors, finish bath and wall construction in upstairs bathroom.

Trees!

Today we decided to go buy some plum trees and in the process had to tear out a huge big-rooty tree in the back yard...

Just the beginning

Some where in the middle

More cutting and sawing

Digging that root out

Relocated my herbs to this side of the lawn

Almost!

Manure time...you can imagine how funny our boys thought that was

My tree! Please be happy here!

Grass

Short little blurb on how excited we are that we see green in our front yard! We all go out every day and admire it...like a little pet. It's very fun. :)

Here's also a picture of the great find we had last week. Sam really wanted a comfy chair in his office for those long hours of reading or studying. And last week, a neighbor down the street was getting rid of his recliner for free. After my sister and her friend helped me carry it down the street, our elderly neighbor stopped my sis. He told her what a great chair it had been. How much he loved it. How he originally spent 1200 bucks on it (!!) and how he had taken a lot of naps in that thing over the years.
So here it is - the best deal on a chair I could find.

It even has a back massager!