Modern on the cheap

We have seen this done on a few other sites so we figured we would try it out ourselves.

First take the interesting owl statue you got for free but is a little too 70's looking.



Clean the surface well to get rid of all the dust and oils from hands touching it. I used Mineral Spirits but rubbing alcohol will work well too. Be sure to use a cleaner that will evaporate quickly and not something that will leave any kind of residue that will mess up your paint job.

If the statue is not painted you will need to prime it. However, ours was so we were lazy and skipped the priming.

Apply 3-4 light coats of flat white spray paint. It's better to do light coats in order to prevent runs in your paint.



Let things dry and step back and enjoy your new modern looking statue. It almost looks like it came from the Jonathan Adler store.



Be seeing you.

Chop Chop Round 2

Ever since we had the goats out we have been slowly removing the rest of the little junk from our backyard. We decided it was time to bring in some people to take care of the big stuff that we couldn't do.

We went with Limb-it-Less Tree Removal which is the same company we used before. Initially, we called them out to remove the logs on the ground and 2-3 standing trees in the back yard. After talking a bit we decided it would be cost effective to remove more trees since the tree guys would already be there with the equipment. 2-3 trees quickly became 7 trees which ended up turning into 11 trees.













I'm shocked this tree hadn't snapped yet. It was one of the tallest in our yard and there was hardly anything to it.



The first thing they took care of were the left over piles I had made and the privets we had not chopped down yet.





A loader was used to carry out most of junk and all the logs. If I had a good looking yard this would have bothered me but since it's all pine straw and weeds I didn't care.



You could never pay me enough to do this job. I'd either fall off the tree or cut my arms off on the first day.



I never get tired of watching trees fall. It's scary and exciting at the same time.





Our neighbors and I were happy to get rid of these trees for 2 reason. The first was because they were leaning towards the neighbor's house. The second is that now both yards can get a little more sun.







All of the stumps plus an additional 15 or so were grounded down the next day. We were so happy to have all the privet stumps done because it is a pain in the butt to dig them up.







It still amazes us how big our back yard is. We never assumed it was this big when we bought the house.

The next steps will be to install a fence and come up with a plan for what we are going to plant back there. We don't want it totally open like it is now but it's nice we have a clean canvas to work with.

It will be a while before we can fence or landscape though. We just found out the county is coming to dig up our back yard (as well as the yards of several neighbors) to get to a sewer line. More on this as it develops.

Be seeing you.

Susan's Christmas Gift

This is just a start. I will post more about it as things get going.