Spring is Busting Loose

This pooch jumped in my truck when I visited a prospective client.

Talk about a change in the weather, the first two weeks I was home snow and blow but these past two have been heaven, high temperatures in the 80's nearly 90 a couple of days. Needless to say I jumped all over it and brought back 100 percent of the employees and am trying to hire at least two more. Seems the men and Theresa are glad to be off their couches although the hard work brought some sore muscle complaints. A few of the guys have already completed two full weeks of work.

We are nearly complete with our first job of the season. The job requires a diverse skill set as painting, reconstruction of the garage door and playhouse, landscaping, driveway building and even the lost art of window glazing to replace several broken single pane windows. The home made garage door was beyond simple repair to keep its operation as the original design was intended so we modified it by sawing it in half and attaching hinges so that it now swings out instead of lifting overhead.

Not to many hitches in this job except after we filled in the old steep driveway to recapture the view I thought we could use a glacial stone retaining wall on the road side, plus we had a good selection of rocks to use. The hitch is the location of the wall in relation to the county right of way set back and not being within 5 feet of the sewer lines, we had an inspection this morning and await the ruling of the county.

This is the cover plate for the old stone fireplace we are going find

a home for it in the landscaping keeping a piece of history.

The wooden staircase provides quick access to the new cottage from the lakeside log cabin which is the main residence. The cottage will be put to good use for kids and grandchildren as well as the boyscout troupe with which the homeowners are heavily involved. I am sure plenty of good times will be had on this lovely piece of earth.

The plant material, mulch and most of the stone work is complete. The new driveway and car park gets the traffic away from the main door and sets a sweet tone for the entrance. Small Canadian Hemlocks have been installed to soften the woods, add year round beauty and eventually provide greater privacy. When the lawn turns green this cottage will bath in the light of its charm.

We Do It All

We have just finished the warmest winter in ten years but the horizontal snow this week and 3o mph wind gusts make it an arguable point. The 60 degree day predicted for today is really sounding good I just hate the weight of all these winter clothes. Yesterday I donned the backpack blower and removed frozen leaves from a wooded lot where they have accumulated for several years. I uncovered a garter snake in full hibernation, the snake lay on top of the leaves for ten minutes before it got enough circulation going to slither away.

Some of the many deer on our property seem to run the same route each day. A trio with two babies and a mama with a broken leg get very close to our house which really gets the dogs riled.

One of the tasks on our current job is to power wash a small garage and playhouse. The weather cooperated enough on Wednesday to get the garage finished. The garage door needs some work to make it easier to operate. The door is the design of the previous owner and is an engineering marvel all home made with a hand poured counter weight used to hold the door open. The central slide bears all the weight and the result is the door is terribly bowed. We will be trimming the door, installing new pulleys and reinforcing the glide rails.

The old steep driveway is being filled but first we removed the glacial stone that held the hill, we were surprised by the size of some of the rocks. We have used some of them already and plan to use others for a wall and rock curbing.






The well house was destined for destruction until I got to thinking a little more about it, now we are going to make a great planter out of it. Robert will power wash and once it is filled with flowers it is gonna be really sweet.

In order to build the new car park I needed to have our friendly stump grinder Gary come out and remove this three foot behemoth from the car park entrance. It is nice to start out the year with a job that has a lot of variation and too much heavy lifting.