The carpenter installed the mantle and after a very long process but our new fireplace is finally finished. Being your own general contractor even for a little job like this is really a hassle.  Getting the right heating unit, picking out the stone, finding a mason and a carpenter, scheduling everybody….  Geez!  We love the result though.

Trisha and I just finished a landscape design class (four 3-hour sessions).  Now we’ll have to see if we can take what we learned in the classroom and make something cool in the back yard.  Our focus this spring is the shady area just outside the kitchen window.  This is Trisha’s first draft of the planting plan.  If it ever stops raining we’ll be heading out to our favorite nurseries to see if we can find the appropriate plants.

We decided that keeping the carpet clean in the family room was a hopeless task so oak flooring is going in today.

I’ve never liked our family room fireplace. The used brick facade looked… used, like materials scavenged from the junk yard.  And the gas fireplace generated so little heat you had to get right next to it to feel any warmth at all.  So after countless visits to various fireplace stores and many more trips to the stone yard we finally got the new stone and fireplace installed; the new look is super.  It was quite a mess for three days but the result is great.  The 38,000 btu gas unit can get the room up to 80 degrees in minutes.  We are working with a carpenter to get a new mantle and that should be finished early in April.

It’s been a long winter–it’s almost March and we still have 6 inches of snow on the ground.  In addition to the birds and the ducks we’ve been feeding three raccoons that stop by every evening around 9:30 or so.  It’s not a good thing to do, I know, but I suspect they aren’t finding much to eat with the weather we’ve had.  So they will get an apple and some nuts until the snow melts.  I think this little coon paw print in the snow is beautiful.

Amidst a snow squall, Marenakos Rock Center delivered the hearthstone and rock for our new fireplace.

The transformation of our family room is underway.  Today we had the old fireplace demolished and a new high-efficiency, gas fireplace installed.  We’re left with the roughed-in unit until the stone work happens in about a week.

Old red brick goes out

Roughed-in new fireplace

Ater some two months, our dingy old laundry room has been transformed into a stylish cherry wood cabinets, green granite countertop wonder.

After

Before

Last night’s storm left us without electricity for some 16 hours.  But with the automatic backup generator we had installed last month we were well prepared.  I took advantage of a short break in the weather late this afternoon to snap a few photos of the very last leaves still clinging to the trees.  This is my favorite: just a little shoot from a Ninebark bush.

Ninebark Leaves