"Tree Trimming" is an Understatement!
Since we moved in we have been slowly trimming and removing some of the trees in the upper part of our slope to keep them from growing over the house and becoming more of a fire danger than they already were. So, in late June of 2007 we decided to really make a mess in the backyard by having our neighbor bring over his tree service truck with a 57' boom to make a serious dent in our overgrown eucalyptus grove.
This truck was so big that we spent the whole morning moving an old wall and a bunch of dirt in the front yard to get it past the side of the house, but it certainly was worth the effort! It took a mere 4 hours in the afternoon to top all of the trees in the upper 30 feet of the slope to about 15' tall. We then spent the rest of the weekend and the next several days rounding up, cutting, and chipping all of the branches and logs that we cut down in that short afternoon.
We then spent the next several weekends working to dig and pull out the remaining tree stumps with help from Glenn's work truck, a medum sized loader, and a rented excavator. The one thing you figure out very quickly when dealing with that many big trees is that having access to the right equipment is worth it's weight in GOLD!!!
Fireplace Rebuild
In our opinion, the original fireplace in this house left quite a bit to be desired. Luckily, we were already making a mess of our house with the kitchen, so we pulled
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Timber...
As we were walking out to our backyard in mid July, we noticed that the massive Eucalyptus tree on the corner of our property was beginning to encroach upon the house.
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The Kitchen Remodel
Ever since the day we first walked through our new home, we both knew that the original kitchen had to go! The house was built in 1978 and the kitchen definitely showed
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Schooner gets a sister!
About a year after Schooner came into our lives, we decided to expand our family a little more by adopting a Lab/Shepherd mix named Spinnaker. Originally from
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Schooner... The newest addition to the family!
It was a regular Saturday morning in February when Anne strolled past the local PetsMart and was captivated by a yellow Lab with one Brown and one Blue eye. (And I thought
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