Life as I currently know it . . .

Someday I will get the hang of uploading the pictures in a good order. Well, I thought I knew that already but today's upload now looks rather random. But in the interest of time, I'm leaving it as is.

I'm primarily posting these pictures (1) for my brother's benefit and (2) because this has been my life for the past month. These are just exterior views.

Here is what is called the "old rock house." We put down more gravel in the parking area and a gravel trail around the south side of old rock house. (I think the rock part of this house was built by my grandparents at about the turn of the century. I don't know when the brick part was added but it was the first post office and store here in town.)

Here is a shot to show the gravel "trail" I was referring to and the gravel between the houses. I see now that the picture doesn't exactly show all the gravel but you get the idea. The tarp in the foreground is covering B's tomato patch, a kind of sun shade (is that an oxymoron?).

Here is the rear view of Tom's house. Like our contractor said, the stucco made the house look good even from the back. :-)

Here is a big improvement--air conditioning. Lovely invention.

Here are the front porch railings as of today. They are not quite in finished form. When finished, the railings and window grate will be taken down and powder coated white and reinstalled.

Here is our third dumpster full of stuff in four weeks. I just thought I would document it before it is emptied on Tuesday morning. About 1/2 of one dumpster came from the old rock house but otherwise it has come from Mom's house.

Here is Tom's house from the front. How changed it does look.

Here is Mom's house. With this shot, I wanted to try to capture the clean windows but other than the fact that the sun screens are no longer on the west-facing windows, this does not do full justice to the window washing job. It does show up that B and the boys did the yard yesterday, though. B plans to try and reseed the lawn, particularly to fill in the bare spots from his earlier weed eradication campaign.

Here is a closer view of the back porch or wash room area at Mom's that was re-clad with wood to cover the worn particle board. It hasn't been painted but at this time it looks nice and fresh.


This pretty much accounts for the outdoor projects we've undertaken lately:

• yard work and general yard clean up;
• re-cladding the back porch;
• a 2-1/2 hour clean out of the old rock house;
• cleaning between the two houses in preparation for the gravel;
• gravel: path between the houses, to the south of the old rock house, along the north side of the gray house, and in the parking area;
• repair to the cooler turn-off;
• putting the "lid" on the turn-off area;
• hauling off the old fire place insert and some other assorted metal items;
• sweeping/spraying off the porch and the benches,
• window cleaning (by a window cleaning contractor) and
• earlier, repair to the swamp cooler.
  

Now we are having new lights installed at the corners of the house that will turn on just when it gets dark; one, maybe two electrical outlets outside; finding and installing the screens (not sun screens) for the west-facing windows; reseeding the lawn; repair of the corner of the front porch; and eventual painting of the back porch. That's what is on deck for the outside.

I wish I'd taken before and after photos of the projects, particularly on the inside of Mom's house. But all we did and are doing on the inside of Tom's and Mom's houses are posts for another day.

Tomorrow, we dive back in to dejunking. Dumpster number 4, here we come!