Current state of the backyard

It's tidy but it photographs terribly.

Bam!

Couch!

Cherry Blossoms!

New dresser!

Almost doubled our clothing storage!

We are getting a tree in October!

We are getting a tree!  A Daybreak Cherry tree, to be exact.  It is a deciduous tree and has pretty white or pink flowers in the springtime.  I think it will look nice in front of our house.

We are getting a tree through the Friends of the Urban Forest project, which includes a subsidy through the city for a portion of the tree costs.  The trees will all be planted on October 16th by a bunch of neighborhood volunteers. Unfortunately, we will already be out of town by then and won't be able to participate in the planting.  

We are putting the tree in the strip of earth near the driveway.  There was previously a tree there, and Sushant and Dad supervised the stump removal on Tuesday morning.  

Here is the hole.  It reminds me of my wisdom teeth sockets!

The fungus that was breaking down the old stump.

Looking forward to watching it grow!

Garage Door Update

The new garage door with first coat of paint!

Sushant is painting the garage door! It was primed by Vic the Garage Door guy. On Sunday, we caulked the windows and panels (GE Clear Window and Door Max 3500 Paintable Caulk) inside and out.

Yesterday, he put the first coat on the door. The paint colors match what we had originally - lucky that Vic kept a couple of original piece of wood from the old barn doors.

The original doors

New Bookshelves

For the book overflow. I'm going to open a Shantaram store.

Long story short...

This is our new tv.

Bam!

Guest room

So much room with the bed!

The New, Automatic Garage Door

The old Garage Door was cute, but it was barn-door style and not very safe.  Plus you had to get out of the car to open it, and I'm lazy.  

Here's the new Garage Door!  Notes from Stacey:

Highlights:

1. It's super quiet, barely able to hear it when you open it.
   
2. Light automatically comes on which lights up the garage.
   
3. Keyless entry!!!!  He put a keyless entry on the outside.
   
4. On the key pad INside the garage, it reads the temperature, you have an option to turn on the light by itself and you can open the garage with a push of the button.

Vic, he's so intuative.  He saved two pieces of the glass from the old garage door, in case you need replacements for the regular door in the garage, plus he saved two pieces of wood from the old door in case you wanted to try to match the colors.  Right now the door is white with frosted glass and it looks just fine!!!!

Pictures and books

Neighbors finished their fence!

The Yard: BEFORE and AFTER

The Yard in a Cleaned Up State

There are plants and nice things back here, like a walkway, a small patio in the back, flowerbeds, flowering trees and shrubs, it's nice stuff!  It's all been cleaned up today and it smells very wormy outside, but I hope that as the sun shines on it this afternoon, it will dry up and smell normal.  side note:  it's really warm back there, perfect tanning area (when we get full fences done).

and this is from the BBQ area, the brickwork looks a lot nicer when it's cleaned up (I still don't love it though, it's too RenFaire for me).

From the back of the yard, looking at the house.

You can't really see in this picture, but this is the little pine.

This is the other corner.

This is a really nice, tall flowering shrub.  

Closeup of the flowers on this puppy.

Backyard so far

Will send final pic later!

Front patch of yard

Looks way better!

The window

Has been absconded by Frank. Will have a new one on Wednesday.

New blinds 2

New blinds 1

Argh! It's hard to take pics of windows, too bright!

Blinds installation

This is Gary installing the new blinds. "After" photo coming soon...