After the trees were removed, I had to decide on what to do with the slope of the yard. I have never like the 4 ft drop of the yard.

The decision was made to make a block retaining wall.

One of the hardest parts of the project was hand digging out the remains of the stump so I could lay the foundation for the wall. What a mess, but it was interesting to flow the roots out. Such a massive tree with not much holding it up.

A foundation was laid to stack the bricks on …

I ended up buying 2 1/2 truck loads of bricks.

I have been having problems with clogging of my sewer line. After the last time the city came out to clean the main line apparently they decided to fix the issue once and for all….

When the line was removed there was a big slug of tree roots (the brown slug in the center of the picture) growing in the sewer line from a cracked clay pipe.

The line was replaced with a PVC line,

and the yard restored with sod. The amazing thing is it only took the crew about 2 hours to complete the work. Yeah! No more backups.

Lately I have been getting concerned about try limb overhangs, rotten limbs, etc and decided to have some tree cut down. In total I had 6 trees removed. I love it now and should have a lot less leave to rack in the fall….

These trees are crazy tall so I hired some tree cutters…

Rot area on my hickory tree.

Glad I took these big guys down. I’ll be much safer if a hurricane comes through.

I find it fascinating that the Allen the tree climber just loves getting up in trees and cutting limbs. I guess it is all in what you get used to and being safe

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Donnie the tree man. I like this shot, but Donnie gave me the run around and didn’t grind out one of the stomps after I paid him. Taught me a less about contractors.

While installing the french the trailer was filled with 2 tons of gravel. Suddenly the trailer would move anymore.

WTF? I thought I hit a sink hole

Apparently it turned out to be an improperly abandoned septic tank from ?? 1950s maybe.

I asked a buddy what to do, and he said break the cover in and fill it with sand.

It is great to have a friend with a tilting bed. In a few hours it was filled and now I’ll let it set for a month to compact the soil then I’ll plant some grass on it.

Another problem corrected at the house.

Donnie show up to grind out these MASSIVE stumps left over from the trees which were removed.

How is this lithe machine going to take on……

Huge stomp…

After a long while of grinding Donnie finally got it out of there. Nice!

I have never been happy with the water drainage off the west end of the house. One half of the house runoff is all coming down in one small area, so I decided to install a french drain to collect it and keep from washing out my yard.

A collection pipe was added to take care of the runoff from the roof over the addition

The water from the roof drains travels down the pip to a gravel filled ditch with a perforated pipe to distribute the water. If it overfills, then I can add to the drain and pipe the excess off.

Around the pool filter area.

The final look. Note: it works very well and I have zero erosion of the yard now. Next step is to get gutters installed on the back of the house to collect the water to the piping.

Well today I tried a different combination of paints.

another…..

and another….

And finally inhere is the one..

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This style I like… finally, a keeper!

This is the final look when all is done…..

Well I am going to do some repainting. I matched the siding on the rest of the house and painted the porch with the colors I thought would work.

Well, I DONT LIKE IT.

The columns just don’t look right and the detail work just looks wrong to me….

Dam, I am frustrated now. I think the I am going to go with much darker columns and trim.

Today was my lucky day… i think..?

I stopped to get some fuel for my car, and there was a big trailer full of fencing. I asked the fencing Forman If he could find me some 4 ft fencing for my yard and he offered me the entire trailer for $200. 600 ft of 6 ft high fencing with poles, top rails etc.

I don’t need that much fensing, but I’ll use what I can and maybe trade some for installation costs.,

Now the only problem is finding someone to install it.

Since finishing the porch, a number of weeks ago, I have been trying to figure out exactly what colors to paint it. I have maroon, light green and dark green to work with as the overall color choices of the house.

This is how the work looks now. The weird thing is I have grown attached to the primer cream color of the Hardiplank.

While going ice fishing, I saw this house in Farmington, Maine, (http://tinyurl.com/lu8sxhk) and quickly asked Ron to stop so I could take some pictures. I had all the same colors I chose to paint my house with the exception of cream! The color was almost exactly the same as the Hardiplank color.

I just fell in love with the combination, and now have the missing ingredient for my house.

My trip help me solve which colors to paint my porch. Lets get the brushes ready…..