And so it begins. We've begun to clear the lot.
It might be almost two months since we've closed, but I promise we have not been standing idly by. As it stood, the lot was covered in junk trees, junk piles, and broken glass and needed a thorough cleaning, which we've had to attempt to schedule around the lovely spring weather and, of course, my husband's work schedule.
My Mom and I have been down at the property as often as possible, but most of our time has been spent picking up broken glass. This past weekend, we were able to bring in a mini-excavator and my husband got to work clearing out many of the trees and much of the underbrush. I have to say, the lot is beginning to look so much better!
The small garage building to the right of the house was also brought down. It was being supported mainly by a two by four in the center and was unsafe. As much as I would have liked to have saved the boards (I had a plan for them!) they were sadly too rotten to save.
After three days of work (and Matt stressing over noise and being an annoyance to the neighbors so much that he even unplugged the backup alarm on the mini-excavator, ha! Luckily, they are incredibly understanding.), we've finally, for the most part, have the lot cleaned up.
I will say, our kids are tired of this place already! Our toddler was so happy to just be home on Tuesday. Little do they understand that this is only the very beginning of a long process -- and a whole lot of weekends spent at work here.
We still need to try and rake up some of the leftover glass from removing the main junk pile and haul out the piles of brush. Between my Mom and I, we've picked up 16 very large boxes of broken glass -- we probably will have that many more by the time we are finished.
We were able to save a ton of old glass bottles. Matt has begun rolling his eyes when I find yet another and I have now earned the name "bottle collector". In my defense, he was quite aware I had an affinity for old bottles long before he married me. But now that the entire parlor is covered in old bottles, I think he thinks that I am a bit insane.
We ordered a bunch of arborvitae trees for pick up this weekend, so we will spend Saturday and Sunday working to plant those. They are very young -- only a couple of years old, but our hope is that they will grow quickly enough to provide both our neighbors and our guests with privacy.
We plan to do a lot of landscaping around this place, but the remainder will wait until we have the well and structure completed. From there, we'll probably straighten up and fortify our outhouse. Yes, we are absolutely keeping it!
