Installed 150’ of french drain around the vegetable garden and stone path to prevent the annual washing away of all the mulch / flooding with the spring rain. Huge effort.

Making lemonade out of lemons after we lost an oak tree in a wind storm. Made a list play area for the kids out of large pieces of the tree.

Watched a tree fall in a wind storm while taking lunch. 75’ tall, ~23” diameter a couple feet off the ground. In good health from what I could tell. Ground was super saturation from a month of constant heavy rain. Salvaged the wood to make a woodland playground for the kids.

Made a bomb-proof gardening table from scraps.

Just a simple sandbox for the kids mad from 2x6s. When they grow out of it, will make a great garden bed.

Fence is old and lots of poles are rotted and collapsing at the base. Replaced 22/82. More to come in the future. Got a big pole pounder to drive in galvanized steel poles 42” into the ground, without concrete.

A variety of projects to setup the new vegetable garden.

Installed kitchen island counter, replacing the original bi-level design with a single level quartz slab.

Wow what a huge amount of work! Two weeks after we moved in a tree fell in storm. We cleaned it up, but identified 6 other dead and standing trees on the property that were also at risk of falling. Had a tree service cut the 6 down. It would have cost a fortune for the service to also clean everything up, and would have been a tremendous waste as they just take logs to the dump. Instead, I decided I would do the cleanup to save some money, stash away some firewood, and score some logs to mill into boards for woodworking.

We have a crawlspace under a portion of our house and the floor is very cold above it. I set out to add some insulation to try to reduce heat loss and improve comfort.