Ivy...Begin the takedown!

As you may have noticed in previous pictures, the front of our property has little or no Curb Appeal. As one drives up to the house all you can see is the roof, the wood fence, and the huge amounts of ivy covering the fence. Early on we cut away the ivy from the edges of the gate, but the entrance to the courtyard is well disguised. It's way past time to open up the space...

 This was taken while standing in the street.

The little bit of wood you see on the left is the main gate to our front courtyard.

This one was taken from just inside the main gate off the street. To the left is the old shed - one day it will be rebuilt but for now it stands almost as we found it. To the right (perpendicular to the photographer) is a fence with a gate. Going through the gate - which was always open - takes us past the front of the house and around to the side doors. Straight ahead you can see the huge ivy that is taking over the world. A few weeks ago Dan, Jen and I spent about 4 hours (that's 12 'man' hours!) taking down part of the ivy...only the part that runs between this gate and the shed - about 5 feet wide by about 8 feet high and 3-4 feet deep. Yes, really.

Here we have taken out most of the ivy and what was left of the so-called fence beneath.

 We've cleaned up a bit and Dan is beginning to rebuild the fence.

We are reusing wood from a previous project...

Because of the large rocks on the left, Dan is having to carve the boards to fit.

I got busy working and forgot to stop to take interim pictures, sorry!

The inside view of the day's work.

From just left of the gate (in the street). You can see the side of the shed and beyond the ivy that's still stands is the parking area. Dan is on the right, standing in the courtyard.

After all the clean up I took this picture from the street. Still not much curb appeal, but certainly

MUCH better than it was. We'll get in and tackle some more ivy another day.

Right now the days are too hot to be outside for long.

This weekend, Dan and I got going on painting our bedroom - finally! Well, you know how it goes...whatever is squeaking the loudest... And, Dan has finished some work in the girls' bathroom so Jen got back to work and painted, then the girls spruced things up a bit.

Looks really nice. Pictures of that next time.

Happy Father's Day to all, especially to my wonderful father by marriage, Mike! I love you, Dad!

See ya soon!

g~

Late Fall Weeds

Okay, so I've been absent for a LONG time. So sorry about that! I'm going to try to post regularly again.

These photos were from last Fall, I believe. Taken behind the house and looking down the hill into our 'yard' this is what we saw. Dan got out our great mower (the one we bought from a friend at a moving sale...thank you, Marla!) and spent about 90 minutes clearing the land of the waist high weeds. Add a little water, keep mowing, and we began to see a nice area below!

The piles of brush you see around the yard are trimmings that will eventually be burned. We live in the country up here and have burn days. Dan and (brother-in-law) Bob love 'em! Now that summer is upon us, though, we have to cut the trimmings to get them in the trash barrel (or pile them up and wait for a winter burn day).

Hard to believe we've been in our home for 7 1/2 months! The time has flown by and we are SO loving being here! Projects move much more slowly than we'd like since work and school get in the way [   :-)  ] but things are coming along nicely!

See ya soon!

g~