Backyard: Bunny and Roses

Liz, literally stopping to smell the roses.
Liz, literally stopping to smell the roses.
Liz did a lot of digging today. With so much time having elapsed (we have a terrible Home Depot story, that’s still in progress)… several of the holes collapsed on themselves. And required more digging.
On walking in, we were just amazed. And giggling an awful lot.
The room is prepped, and ready to be sanded, primed, and painted.
Progress and aftermath.
These are photos from the first day, after the drywallers finished in the office. I can’t tell you how exciting this was to see. The in-progress state is just so different from what we’ve known this room to be.
A session with Salt, which seemed to go rather well. A bit later, Toni would let us know that Salt was “a little boy crazy.”
Today, Liz suited up and put in some time in the front office. I’m still unable to really assist, so this was all her. She hauled a ton of material out, and set about getting the room ready for drywallers.
Today, Liz went down to the basement and spent some time reviewing/revisiting the work she’d done to prep for our trim. She mixed up newer variations, and was working on dialing in the formula for the shellac/stain for our overall trim.
One challenge: in some spots, we had some seriously large roots that had grown over the concrete. So we had to break out the sawzall and cut through a lot of material, to make space for the concrete to come out.
Just so it’s clear: Liz and I purchased a Farm jack, for the post removals. We decided that our prior approach wasn’t good enough, and the right tool for the job (to get the whole post out of the ground) was something we needed to purchase.
So today, if things go well, there would be little to no lifting at all. And our goal would be to let the jack do most of the work. And for me, to let Liz do most of the work, due to my back.
Our approach involved getting a bottle jack under a few 2x4s, screwed into the side of the post. We balanced things on a 2×6 board, that was sitting on a series of 2×4 blocks.
Rather than repair things, we assessed and decided we were going to tear the whole thing down and start over. And we had the (good? bad?) idea to do the removal and new fence by ourselves. And lucky you, you get to watch.
House night again! We’re very close to finishing up the front office – one last bit of flooring, and the remainder is getting some insulation in the joists… and a vapor barrier.
House night tonight – Liz was working on demo-ing the remaining floorboards in the hallway, while I was working on getting up insulation in the office walls.