Any Hope We Had...

...that the Sycamore was going to revive itself in the spring has been dashed.

Here's what's left of the trunk, with a big old boot print next to it.

Sigh.

How Much Is Lowe's Paying Us To Advertize?

I took this week off work, so I asked the guys not to come so I didn't have to listen to hammering all day long. Which, of course, means the gigantic Lowe's ad is going to be up longer than we would have liked...

What A Difference A Year Makes

Okay, the oak is still dwarfed by the tomato plant, but compared to last year it's huge!

Rob used the oak for our Christmas card this year. You can see a pic of it here, on Tom Spurgeon's blog.

Relocated

The hot water heater was moved so these two windows cold be put in downstairs.

I'm really excited for this particular corner of the house. I think it's going to be great having these two windows just a little above ground level. I want to plant something sweet smelling so that when they're open the whole basement will smell delicious.

Pretty

The corbels have been painted and reinstalled for a while now, but I kept forgetting to post a picture. Rob thinks they're a little too yellow, but I'm happy. I LOVE the curves and niches of the original wood. They're going to look amazing once the new siding is up.

This House Is Brought to You by...

It really pisses me off that the vapor barrier our contractor chose is covered with the Lowe's Logo. Thanks for making our house a walking billboard, stupid corporation! Counting the days until it's covered with our beautiful, cedar siding...

This May Not Look Like Much To You...

...but for the first time in MONTHS, our driveway is clear.

No bags of old siding covered in lead pain.

No piles of misc. crap.

We can actually park two, maybe three cars here -- just in time for the holidays.

Woo-hoo!

Muddy Waters

Every time it rains, our whole backyard turns into muddy quicksand that sucks on your shoes.

They guys fixed the grading so the water doesn't drain into the basement and now we have boards down so we can walk around without losing a shoe, but I am counting the days until I can landscape and put a permanent end to the problem.

Did I Mention It's December?

This is our mango tomato plant -- it's taller than our oak tree, which is the plant inside the bricks.

It has blooms on it, but no fruit. We do have green tomatoes on some of our other, smaller tomato plants, so who knows?

For some reason, the size and shape of this particular plant reminds me of Snuffleupagus. Weird, I know.

When in Doubt, Work Inside

The engineer put the chimney on the plans, but the plan checker said now the window count is messed up and wants us to rip out the chimney. We want to bring that fireplace back some day, so the contractor is trying to figure something else out. Sigh.

In the mean time, the guys continue stripping the windows inside. I love how the new wood looks against the old and we want to keep that two tone effect. We went shopping for stain yesterday and got a slew of samples to try out.

Still Standing

We had a crazy wind storm -- kept us up all night.

Our new fence, which has just been stained the day before the Santa Ana's came, nearly blew over. Rob had to prop it up until the guys can get here tomorrow to attach it more sturdily to the base.

All and all, we were really lucky -- no damage, just some trash in the yard.