Holidays? What are those?

I finally booked a week of holidays off for the start of September. I had hoped to go visit several friends and get out of town for a few days, but it seems I have some minor emergencies at home that will have to be done instead.

We finally got the tree in the front cut down. All that is left is the stump sticking up about two feet. As I don't have a chainsaw, I'll have to dig it out and use an axe to cut it out below ground surface. That will easily consume a day of holidays.

The front of the house is now exposed to the street, and the white upper section looks TERRIBLE. It will have to be scraped and painted, along with the window frames. Another two days of holidays.

My upstairs bathroom has a bit of mold growing in the paint. Seems the exhaust fan is not working very well. Need to paint and replace the fan. Another day of holidays.

The fencing in the back yard needs to be worked on some more, both new and existing. Plus I need to do some further landscaping and such before the snow flies. Two days of holidays.

The eaves troughs need some attention, and a new cistern installed. Probably half a day of work.

That's my week. I can only hope the weather holds to cool but not raining while I get the painting done.

Fences, fans, and fun!

Aside from trying to sleep in a bit this morning, today was anything but lazy.

First thing, I went out and bought some screws to work on the fence in the back yard. We started at about 1pm, and worked through the day, stopping for an hour to allow the cordless drill to charge.

The fence is 3/4 finished at this point. All I need to do now is put the bottom section on (to keep the gravel from spreading across the grass), and mount the plastic covered chain link. I have to buy stain for it, but I'm probably going to have to stain the whole yard's fence at the same time. I've got the first week of September scheduled off. Hopefully I can get it done then! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, seeing as it's the first fence we (Rob and I) have ever made. And all this with only one injury!

There's a before picture of the backyard at the top of the post.. Here's the "finished" one..

Another change is another ceiling fan. I swear these things were designed just to piss me off. Looking at the instructions you would think it is easy. They show you pictures and everything. But what they don't tell you is that you were supposed to mount the damn thing BEFORE putting the electrical box up and dry walling around it. Luckily, I've done four others before, and it only caused mild frustrations while installing this one.

Again, a before and after picture.

The tree at the front of the house is still grinding away on our nerves. We didn't get a chance to take it down last weekend, so we'll have to re-schedule it. It's definitely going to be removed before winter. It's scraping away on the side of the house and driving all of us crazy when the wind blows. And if you've ever lived in Saskatchewan, you know it NEVER stops blowing in the winter.

I think I'm going to have a nice long shower, relax with a cool drink, and watch tv for the rest of the evening. I have a feeling the rest of the week is going to be busy.