Long time no blog (empty backyard)

Owing to the last throes of the legal proceedings which have allowed us to keep the castle in the first place—but which threw one last financial monkey wrench into the works—we've only taken one step in the last several weeks. (Actually this happened over a month ago now. Whew! We need to get back to work on this place.) We finished getting everything torn out of the yard...professionally. No more of this inefficient hacking away with the wrong tools...That was fun and a fine way to start, but now witness the blank slate, wiped clean:

viewed from the NW corner of the lot

...from NE corner...

...from atop the gardeners' ladder, looking NW...

OK, so it's not exactly beautiful...but it's ready for action. What will happen out here?

Not shown: The considerable chunk of the big tree overhanging the roof which the gardeners trimmed back, thankfully. I'm not sure how much less debris we can actually expect to accumulate up there, given how huge she remains...but it's the thought that counts, right?

Grout hits the tile

Did I mention our new dude is fast? He told us he'd be done Monday. Finished in half the time.

Tile hits the floor

I have been eagerly anticipating this day for a while now...The previous post, by the way, featured a shot of this tile on the floor of the tile store. Here it is on our floor, by golly!

The whole job will be done at the end of Monday, barring any unforeseen stuff. This is a new team of contractors, who are so far giving us much less reason to think that the types of unforeseen stuff that plagued our last hired crew are going to continue to crop up.

Next steps are some new appliances, then countertops and cabinets, and a cool "bar" thing in the breakfast room which the new contractor designed (in about 30 seconds—dude is fast). The exact order in which these "chunks" of kitchen will appear is not yet clear, but in the coming weeks and months, the bulk of our penny-saving will be for the kitchen-laundry-breakfast area of the castle. Finally!

Kitchen tile = mission accomplished

We could be slippin' across these gorgeous things in our socks as early as a week or two from now. Another quantum leap after a much-slowed process of door and window restoration and sporadic painting...(Neither of those projects are finished, by the way. These things take as long as they take, it turns out.)

Still paintin'

Yes, there is still paint to get on the walls. Today is a day off of school for me—and I hardly know why. (I think it's because my broke-ass district is doing some "furlough day" or something.) So why not slap a bit more up there?

The green room was already almost finished, just had to polish off the second coat that had remained incomplete because we'd run out of paint. And...first coat in the living room is done and drying. It's the same color as the dining room, but it doesn't look like it yet.

Name that tree, cont'd

Acacia melanoxylon! Also known as the Australian Blackwood.

As I suspected, it spreads underground through its root system, in addition to dropping those little seed pods all over the place. They are considered invasive around here, but it turns out their wood is also useful for tons of stuff, including guitar-making. Hmm...

Stalking: it's what cats do...

This cat hangs around our street all the time, wandering hither and thither. Also hangs out in our backyard under the big tree sometimes. No idea whether male or female—Time to decide on a name for it. "Big-Nose"?