Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had time to relax and unwind during the Christmas break. We enjoyed time in Nebraska with my parents and were thankful for good traveling weather both ways.

Speaking of great weather…we have really lucked out with some nice weather this past month. It’s enabled us to do some tree demo work to get ready for this spring when the second floor will be coming down. Ok, we won’t be doing any of the demo but we will be doing the clean-up!

Here are the before pictures. Remember from this post that this will be the new front yard. The house was completely covered by trees. When contractors come up to the house, they are surprised to find such a big house. It’s been hiding behind all these trees!

One morning right before Christmas, Chris got two calls. The first call was the excavation company. They were coming out to do the tree demo work. The second call was from the tree trimmer. He was coming out to take the trees down that were closest to the house. A lot was happening in one day! How exciting!!

Since we still have our normal life going on, we weren’t able to watch the tear out of the trees. We caught the tail end of the last tree coming down. But look at those roots!

Most of the trees were placed on the other side of our driveway. Then they don’t need to be cut up right away. We could focus our efforts on cleaning up what the tree trimmer left us.

I managed to get both the excavator and the boom truck in one picture. Although not all the trees are down yet, you can already see the house much better.

Anyone scared of heights? Obviously not the tree trimmer!

Along with trees in our new front yard, we had the tree trimmer take down the two pine trees closest to the house. We suspect that it was these pine trees that the raccoons were using to get up to the roof and into the house.

These pine trees are going to be a bear to clear!

Once the first round of trees were down, we set to work cleaning up the mess. Of course, the tree trimmer could have done the clean-up. But with a chainsaw and two strong boys to help us, we chose to do the clean-up ourselves. (And save $$$ too!)

You don’t realize how many straggly limbs a tree has until they’re strewn all over your yard. Slow and steady, we dragged all the limbs to piles.

Once the trees were gone, the mess of the ripped out soffits was easily seen.

Just about there! A big stump and a pine tree were left to go! (Kind of looks like a tornado came through!)

This is Chris’ 3rd selfie (ever). As you can see, he needs a little practice. Look into the camera honey!

 

The next day, the tree trimmer came out to get the last stump and pine tree. Once he was done, it was back to work for us!

As I mentioned above…we had two strong boys to help us!

And now…Selfie #4. He’s smiling! (But still not looking at the camera)

Wow! What a difference two days can make! It’s so hard to have patience during a project like this but when there’s an opportunity to see big progress, it makes the wait a little easier. (Plus, we’re getting stronger in the process!)

Till next time…