Look what I found behind these bushes

There's a garage!! Did you know there was one back there? Look closely. ☺

As you can see, between our house and the garage is another obnoxious row of overgrown bushes. Immediately after our traditional Saturday breakfast of pancakes and sausage (Yum!), Kevin headed out to begin the day's work.


He started by trimming back the first clump and, from previous experience pulling out landscaping, was hoping that we would be able to wrap the chain around each one and pull them out with the truck.

Here he is hitching it up.

I got to document.

Attempt #1

Attempt #3

I missed the second attempt. Well, after three, Kevin had enough of the chain sliding up and off without pulling the bush out that we decided to just dig them out.

Yeah, what do you get when you combine frustrated husband with a stubborn shrub? A broken shovel handle. Yep. So, I made a quick trip to Family True Value and returned with a new shovel to continue with.

Mid way through the morning, Ethan was helping Kevin and our neighbor boy, N., again came over to help with the yard work. (Remember him from the last trimming? He's such a helpful kid.)

Sorry about the shadows. N is on the left and Ellie and Ethan are on the right. Notice they all have shovels to help dig out the roots.

Then the party grew. Two more neighbor boys came to join in the fun. Welcome, neighbor A. and his friend J. They thought this looked like so much fun they scrambled to find shovels of their own too.

Five children working at the roots of this line of shrubbery.

It was great! They were having so much fun and Kevin just let them "work" while he trimmed out the rest of the bushes and pulled out the back two.

Finally, just before noon all of the bushes were pulled out of the ground and the last of them where hauled away after our lunch break.

Since Kevin thought that project might take most of the day, we were pleasantly surprised to have enough time this afternoon to move around to the alley side of the house and trim up some of those trees and overgrowth too.

We were very busy and productive outside today. So much so that I forgot to get "after" shots before dusk set in. Here's what I have for now. We'll take new ones tomorrow so you can see what it really looks like.

Look whose vehicles are parked in the garage!

View at the back steps of the wrap-around porch underneath the kitchen windows.

All in all, we are making progress. Man, does that feel good! (Unless you are my shoulders, Kevin's back ... )

Garage pictures

To help document the project, here are some pics taken. Note: these are cell phone pics so the quality may not be phenomenal.

You might be able to notice the torn and ratty shingles along the bottom half of the roof. Those shingles are the reason why we took on this project.

This first picture was taken when all the old felt and shingles were removed from the garage roof. I think Dad and Kevin would agree that this was the most difficult part of the process.

Dad and Kevin installing the shingles.

 So, I have to comment here. By now, surely, you have noticed the massively overgrown shrubbery. You should know, this pretty much surrounds the house.

See? Documentation! I really did help!

We agreed to pay Ellie and Ethan 2 cents for every nail they found and picked up in and around the garage. So far, Ellie has raked in $2.22.

First Round

It is amazing how different a house looks when the former owner leaves a house empty! The good news? We love it even more!

This last weekend was a whirlwind of projects at the house. Big priority? Get it clean! Oy! Thanks to Kevin's mom, our friend Tracey was on hand to work her magic. Tracey was such a blessing. She loves to clean and see the fruits of her labor, and boy, those fruits were abundant! The dirt that came off the walls was ridiculous.

The carpets too. I think we all have no idea how much dirt and nastiness hides and thrives in our carpets and rugs. Thank goodness for my mom's carpet cleaner. Whew! Really, you should have seen the rinse water she was dumping. Totally gross.

I would be amiss if I did not stress that it was really the purpose of my parents' visit to have Dad help Kevin with reshingling the garage. The garage roof was showing significant wear and tear and it was estimated that it would not successfully weather another northwest Ohio winter. Thankfully, Dad was a roofer in a former life and was able to share his experience with us.

Kevin started early in the morning to tear off the old felt and shingles. The unexpected bump on that project was that it took until noon to clean off the roof. Originally, the plan was for them to return home early Sunday morning, but with this bump, they decided to stay longer and get a lot further on the roof. And, that's exactly what they did. When it was time for Mom and Dad to leave, there was just one side of the roof left and I could help enough for Kevin to finish it up. Well, except that we ran out of shingles. But, we fixed that Monday morning and Kevin officially finished the garage roof Monday night.

Roof? Done. Whew!

Oh, yeah. And, we also wanted to tear out carpet in two rooms: Ethan's bedroom and the full bathroom upstairs. Mom did most of Ethan's room. She and I pulled up the carpet, but the padding underneath had completely deteriorated and was giving my allergies major grief. So, Mom finished that room, scraping up the lingering padding with a putty knife. It really worked wonders.

I worked on the bathroom. Yuck! You know, I just want to take a little break here and say that we all deal with our own dirt. And it's gross, but it's your own so it's mostly okay. It's much less okay to work with someone else's dirt. Not cool.

So, the carpet in the bathroom was gross.

Anyway, I pulled it up after some major wrestling with an abundance of carpet tacks. Oy! Seriously, there was no need for so many tacking strips and nails. And underneath it? ... Are you ready for it?? ... Marble! No, I'm just kidding.

There is lovely vinyl tiles glued to a wood floor, which means if there really ever was marble under there it was torn out long ago. Bummer, dude.

That being said, it's vinyl which means it will do until we can renovate that bathroom. Mission: Accomplished.

All in all, a very successful weekend.