Inside and Outside

Our work on our Wisconsin house continues both inside and outside.  I thought I would include some shots of our completed weaving studio now that the paint has dried which enabled us to move our weaving gear back into the room.  I love the new blue color on the walls; the room now feels more "homey" than the sterile white walls that once surrounded us.

Due to the lighting, the walls look grey in this picture; I promise
that they really are a light blue.

The coverlet that Rick wove many years ago hangs on the wall
and fits into the room nicely.

The wall opposite the window wall contains a closet and has room
for the warping board.  A bookshelf holds materials and patterns.

Rick has moved on to the next finished room in the basement.  That larger room used to be our weaving room, but we have turned that into my sewing room and our exercise room.  He spent the morning painting the ceiling and adding the first coat of blue onto the walls.

While he was doing that, I was out on our back screened-in patio unwrapping the patio furniture from their winter covers.  Everything outside is absolutely filthy this year.  The whole house needs a good power washing, and the porch was no exception.  I had hosed down the patio covers yesterday.  Today, since they were dried (even with the rain we had last night), I took them off and folded them away.  Then I swept the floor, de-cobwebbed the corners, and took the furniture outside onto the grass for a good scrubbing and hosing down.  The furniture is in place, but that whole back structure still needs some serious work... including a new roof.  We'll have to see how it looks after we finish with the power washing.

Earlier in the week we continued to remove the overgrown trees from our lot.  Although we love having the trees block our backyard and porch from the neighbors' decks, the trees were so overgrown that they infringed on the neighbor's property by a good three feet, and they were starting to grow into the power lines above them.

The first tree starts to go down.  We cut off most of the branches
before taking down the main trunk.

The second tree was not as wide as it was "squished" between
the first and third trees in line. 

I had removed the smaller dogwoods and lilac bush earlier, but removing the trees took both of us.  We started at the bottom, taking off smaller branches in the multi-trunked trees.  As Rick used the SawsAll to take off the limbs, I dragged them out to the front of our property for the City to come and grind up.

We had five huge trees on the south side lot line of the house.  We removed two of the five so far.  The piles of brush out front are so large that we did not want to add any more to them for fear that the City would refuse to take an overwhelming pile.  We also did not want to kill any more grass under the stacks.

The pile of brush on the curb does not look large, but it is almost
chest-high when I walk up to it. 

I called the City and was hoping that they would have sent a truck out to remove the first pile.  Sigh.  No luck yet, but I know that we are "on the list" for pick-up.  We have a marathon race going past our house this coming weekend, so we hoped that the City would get the brush before then.  Today is Wednesday.  Keep your fingers crossed that the brush is gone by Sunday!

We cannot cut any more until this first load of brush is gone.  Another reason I wish they would pick it up is because I would rather cut down trees while the weather is cool.  Cutting trees when the temperatures are in the high 80s with high humidity is not my idea of fun.  Hopefully by my next post, the first pile will be gone.

The lilac in the back yard bloomed this week.

My lilac bush bloomed this week.  I love the smell of lilacs, so we are thinking of planting more bushes in the back yard between our house and the house to the north of us.  I have one small lilac bush already in the back yard.  I keep it trimmed low so it does not get woody and too large.  I would love to do the same with a few others.  Stay tuned...

The lilacs smell wonderful!

We have neglected this house for so long that this will be our summer to really start to complete some badly-needed maintenance.  Rick said, "Having two houses is a lot of work."

My reply was, "What better things do you have to do with your time?"  These two houses will keep us from getting too bored!