Stumped

Time keeps passing. All at once I have all the time in the world and yet none. I think I just need to abandon all hope of being productive and concentrate on that much anticipated end of the day shower. (Oh the things I look forward to now adays!)

Mike has been trying trying to get things done in between working, working for friends, and taking over for me at 6:30 every night. Yesterday he brought home a stump grinder from work and took care of the two stumps we had in the front yard. (One from the tree we took down a few weeks ago, and one from the tree we took down last year when we put up the porch.)


Now we just lay down some more grass seed and we should be all set, especially with all the rain we're due to have this week. Meanwhile, the rest of our grass seems to be coming up - I swear it's because I've been keeping Mike from driving on it.

Also this past weekend we used one of those deepHo coupons to purchase the ceiling fan for the upstairs office. (It's only been a couple years, after all.) And we purchased an electrical box to be installed at the bottom of our stairs. (We have need of a night light on the stairs and have no outlet!) Maybe this weekend Mike will be able to install both of those.

And the siding? Soon. Very soon, I hope.

On Your Siding

Home Depot wasn't as far off the mark as Mike thought. Which is what I thought. I'm not sure why he had this delusion that the siding would be cheap. Morse Lumber estimated the cost around $2000 - certainly comparable to what we saw at the deepHo. Plus we may be able to get a better price from our neighbor Matt, whose family owns Morse. He helped us out big time on the roofing last year, which was awesome and allowed us to finish by summer's end.

So $2000. I'm ok with that. When do we purchase? That I don't know. Once the siding is here, it has to go up. And that will depend on Mike and TJ's schedules. (TJ our carpenter will be over to get us started, then leave Mike to finish the job. Should be fairly simple.)

One thing's for sure, it's the 21st of May. The month is over as far as I'm concerned. Spring is over pretty much when June hits. To think we were celebrating Mike's 6/1 bday on the porch last year, after starting construction in April. Now that Mike Jr is here, we really have to get cooking.

Announcing Our Newest (And Best) Home Improvement

We finally have our new addition! That's right - baby Mike Jr is finally here! I was a total of 10 days late, giving birth on Saturday May 9th at 1:38am - just a couple days before I was scheduled to be induced. He was 7lbs 2oz and 20inches long - very healthy and beautiful. We got home this past Monday and have been adjusting ever since.

Mike Sr had the week off from work (thank god) to help me out, so we decided to commemorate the occasion by planting two new trees in the front yard. (As I've said before, have a baby, plant a tree - it just makes sense.) The trees I picked are both Kwanzan flowering cherry trees, which I've always loved and wanted for years.


We just barely made the flowering cherry selling season - the garden center only had two left and wouldn't be ordering any more, since they would soon be out of bloom. Lucky for us, that's all we needed.

The next order of business - taking down that disgusting old pine. Which proved to be no big business at all. Mike had the whole thing down and chopped in what seemed like just a few minutes, although I'm sure it had to have been at least an hour or two. And the next day he took the whole thing to the dump. Simple.

The trees didn't prove to be much trouble either. We picked out the locations and Mike dug the holes, digging in a cone shape, with the bottom of the hole about three times larger than the tree's planting container and the top only about the same size. This was advised by the garden center guy, so we could grow grass right up to the base of the tree.

The front yard and the driveway look so much bigger with the pine gone! And we placed the new trees equidistant from the road, house, and driveway, one across from the french doors and one across from the front door. So no more threat of trees getting in the way as they grow.

Two new trees, one old stump

Tree #1

Tree #2

Next order of business - get some siding on the front of the house. While Mike was home, he also took some measurements. Our carpenter TJ did the calculations for us - so now we know how much... but we don't know how much - money that is.

Mike stopped by the Home Depot yesterday on his way home from some errands and discovered the pre-primed cedar clap boards to be very expensive. Around $120 for a bundle of 10, if I remember right. We need over 100 16 footers just for the front of the house. So what does that come out to be.... (getting calculator widget)... $1200? I may have my numbers wrong. For some reason I thought it was more expensive. Ok - I'll check on that.

Not that we'll purchase from the stupid deepHo anyway. A big purchase like this definitely deserves a trip to Morse Lumber. They'll treat us right. Mike will probably go there on Monday to check out pricing. I doubt we'll be puchasing at the moment, but you never know. We've been selling off some of our extra junk to pay for these repairs - a chainsaw paid for the trees, for example. A welder may just pay for the siding.

Negative 8 Days of Baby

Yes - we're still waiting. And the rain keeps falling. The prediction of scattered showers all week long has long since turned into torrential rains all week long and I worry that our grass seed has been washed to oblivion.

At this point we'll just have to see what comes up. Tuesday we really got a soak. Wednesday, showers and clearing in the afternoon. Today showers in the early early morning. More tomorrow. Joy.

It's been 10 straight days of rain in one form or another here.

Negative 4 Days of Baby

I hate to report - there's nothing new to report. No baby. It's been 4 days since my due date and we're still waiting.

My last day of work was the 30th, and after just a few stuck-on-the-couch rainy days, I'm fed up and uncomfortable.

Mike brought home a stump grinder on Saturday and finally took care of a few of our biggest tree stumps. (Never let Nstar touch your trees. They promised us that all stumps would be ground 2" below soil level... and they weren't ground at all. That was about two years ago.)

Sunday we returned the stump grinder and picked up the overseeder and some cape cod grass seed. (For sandy soil.) Mike overseeded the lawn on Sunday afternoon, just in time for the evening's showers. And with showers all week, it should come in nicely. Plus, today we picked up some loam and Mike spread it on our major trouble spots, where grass has never grown. Hopefully this will guarantee an awesome lawn.

And me? I'm just watching him work from out the windows. Ho-hum.

Later this afternoon, we'll probably put up the closet shelves in the baby's room and the upstairs office closet - which has been awaiting a shelf for years. (I really need the storage space now!) If there's time, I'd love to have Mike throw a coat of stain on the baby's room window bottoms and another coat of paint on a toy box we're refurbishing. No big hurry though. The yard work has just been kicking his butt. And it doesn't help that I'm out of commission.