Sunday, February 7, 2010

Short Video of the stump grinder

I don't know I just think this is cool. Sorry for the camera moving around alot.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Ax men 2

Here is an after shot of the yard, looking kinda bare. Molly and Sugar are surveying the landscape.



Here is just some shots showing the scale of the tree and just how large it was.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Ax men

Had a couple tree guys come over a couple weeks ago to give me quotes on removing the trees in my yard. Now before some tree hugger starts to go off on me about global warming etc, just let me say "kiss my ass" I am going to replace them this spring.
The two White Locusts and the Norwegian Pine were growning into the foundation, creating cracks and leaks. The neighbor told me the pine had been there more than 40 years so I suspect it was towards the end of its life span anyway. Limbs would die and fall off all the time into the yard. The locusts? You get out there and rake those leaves. They gave good shade but are really messy in both the spring and the fall. I have tracked in the leaves through the house for a year now and they just never go away. So now that I justified my genocide of the trees, I called 3 guys to come and give me a price to remove them. I figured that it being "off" season for tree removal and these guys are looking for work I would give it a shot.
Stuarts Tree Service did a great job! Cut the trees, ground out the stumps, filled the holes with dirt, raked the whole yard and gave me a credit for the locust wood because it is good burning. Can't say enough about them. They also came in $300 less then the other guys.






I stood outside at lunch watching them cut these bad boys down and the thought occured to me that if I tried to do this myself, A:I would still be trimming the branches off the first tree. B: I would be hanging off of something with a chain saw in my hand. C: cussing like a sailor, and D: where would I put the cuttings?
I like option D: Let the pros do it from a bucket truck.
You can see how big the spruce grew to be in the pictures below. You never really knew how big it was from looking up.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Pantry Door

Made some progress on the pantry door this weekend but ran out of stripper towards the end. There is easily 8 coats of paint on the door. It was taking 4 applications of stripper to get down to the wood. The kitchen really took a beating when it came to paint over the years. Like the rest of the room there was a peach color applied somewhere over the years that kept leaching out from behind the white. Most of the white was just primer that some PO painted on and just left it.
I cut out the top part of the door (reluctantly) so I can put in some etched glass to allow the light to come through. Like the rest of the room the door and trim are made of pine that has yellowed and hardened nicely over the years. I am just gonna sand, prime and repaint white.