Hedges Be Gone!

It's been a while (do all of my blog posts start this way??) and while I have not (yes, still) put up the wallpaper in the bathroom, progress has been made on the front of the house!

When we purchased La Casa Termini back in '06, the front of the house was shrouded in GIANT hedges. These bad boys were thick, scary and loaded with birds nests, snakes and the occasional skunk. Being novices at landscape art, shaping these behemoths was also out of the question-they don't make Lady Schicks for real bushes (ohhh... that was low)!!

So here's what the house looked like when we bought it:

Last summer Jay literally dug the hedge on the far left (if you're looking at this photograph) out of the ground. Fifty year old hedges don't like to be moved, as we found out. Here's what the root ball looked like:

After that nightmare ended, we (Jay) decided that there must be a better way to get these monsters out of the yard. Turns out there is, and I will spare you the details by giving the link to the site that we found the solution to our problem on: Organic Tree Stump Removal

Tomorrow Jay will be cutting the remaining hedges down to size and weather permitting, killing the roots slowly and safely with a little thing called... well, crap actually... As the work is completed I will update with photos and stories (our neighbor is beside himself that we took out the hedges)!

Here is what we're looking at today:

The falling apart steps and hard to see peeling paint red door are being replaced this summer too. Well, the steps are being replaced with wooden steps that will ideally be painted a minty-avocado green, and the door will just be scraped and painted the same green but with darker green accents in the circular details. Eventually the red shutters will also be painted that same avocado color, but that's a project for next year me thinks!

Another doable this year project though, is to replace the colonial style light fixtures on the house with something more atomic looking like this gem from rejuvenation.com: http://www.rejuvenation.com/fixshowW285/templates/selection.phtml?iqg=2188e3d58547dd11560715136b419768

Updates galore...