Good bye, Tree

The tree-guy arrived yesterday and took down the maple from the front of our house. I'm a little sad that we had to chop down the tree, but it had been dying for years. This spring it looked especially unhealthy, with very few leaves on the branches. We were worried it would fall into the house and I was more than a little nervous about the carpenter bees that seemed to be feasting on several limbs.

And it figures, with the location of the trunk above the stone wall, there was no way a stump-grinder could get there to grind it to the ground, so now we have to figure out a way to get rid of the stump. Any ideas?

Curtain called, I answered

I finally finished the curtains for the slider in the kitchen. It only took a year. Aside from the awkwardness of working with a 108" x 96" square of heavy fabric, it was generally pretty simple. I used the pleating tape from DraperySewingSupplies.com  with the pins required to make a soft pleated, lined shade. The tape make it so simple, and it was pretty cheap, that it would be easy to convert rod-pocket drapes into ring and hook drapes, which look a little fancier in my opinion.

In order to spend more time outside

We have a great deck. Our deck is the reason we bought the house. Jeff saw the deck online and convinced me to drive all the way from the city to see the deck.

That's our deck, in the back of the house.

The deck is great. Our backyard is ok. The bugs are terrible. Our yard is so buggy I can't bear to sit outside in the evening for more than a few minutes while I'm eaten alive by the mosquitoes. We've tried citronella and bug spray and even a mosquito magnet. But I end up with bug bites that look like chicken pox.

So we have decided to screen in the deck, instead of renovating the bathrooms. I checked Flickr for some ideas.

Jeff wants to create a room-like enclosure

while I want to make it look like we just screened in a porch.

We agree it should be painted white

And we're trying to figure out the floor and the interior

This is my favorite:

I love the traditional looking pillars and the "front-porch" look.

The inside looks nice too:

More details to come as we work through this project, which we agree should happen soon in order to really enjoy the backyard this summer.

Front doors

I've been casually looking for a "new" front door for the house. I took photos of other front doors in my 'hood.

I checked the salvage yards.

I saw the Vintage Door ad in the back of magazines.

Then today, I checked Home Depot looking for cheap window shades and found this in the door section:

This could be a contender, at less than $1K, its the best deal I've seen so far.

I like the idea of a salvage door, but we already have enough problems with drafts that the smarter thing to do is get a newer air-tight door. I might have to stop into a store and see other versions of this door they have.