Good news!

I'm finally getting around to posting the after pictures of the work that R & R Tree Service did for us at Tanglewood. They did a fantastic job, and I would highly recommend them to anyone! They were on-time, friendly, and worked extremely fast. Here are the results of their work in the front yard:

Before: Two very large oaks causing shade in the front yard at all hours of the day, which means grass can't grow

After: Two very large oak lofted approx 35-40 feet allowing full sunlight at certain points of the day. (This picture is obviously not that certain point of the day, but you get it:)

Before: Large oak near south corner of lot

After: Large oak near south corner of lot gone-zo

Before: Two pines on the north corner of lot (According to several of the tree guys who came by, the pine needles from these trees are also preventing grass from growing in the front yard.)

After: Two pines on north corner of lot gone (I know this is a different angle than the before, but the pines in the before used to live in the mountain of azalea bushes you see to the left in the after picture.)

We were very pleased with the work R&R did for us, and they were so reasonably priced. And believe me, we got price quotes from probably about 75%  of the tree cutting companies in the area. (Some folks are extremely proud of their work.) Now all we need is the grass fairies to show up and do magical things to make our grass grow and look at least half as good as the neighbors' yards. Our new neighbors are all ridiculously good at having great looking grass...no pressure or anything:)

So, enough about the tree stuff. We had an awesome night this past week, and I must share the details with you.

We have a lot of pretty great friends, but the awesomeness of this night involves these two mean muggin' cats:

Mean muggers.

This is Greg and Jana. Out of the blue they offered to cook us dinner this past Thursday evening. We had already planned that evening for Declan to spend the night with his Grandma and Papa so we could work on the house. So, a dinner break with these two sounded perfect. After all, they are two of the best cooks we know, and again, they did not disappoint. Slow cooker Korean pork tacos with coleslaw and sticky rice. Yum! 

After dinner, we brought them over to the house for the official grand tour. Then we got a wild hair. We decided we really wanted to see what it was going to look like with the wall separating the kitchen and formal dining room gone. So, the guys marked the studs in the wall:

"Studs finding studs" by Jana Crouch

Then we all took quite a few "stress swings" through the wall (paneling on one side, drywall on the other) with a crowbar and a 9lb hammer. Afterward, it was confirmed. Chris and I are going to love how open this space is going to be:

View from the center of the kitchen

As if having a great dinner with great friends and taking a hammer and crowbar to a wall wasn't enough to make for a great night, Chris and I got a phone call during wall demo. Tuesday evening we had gotten an offer on our current home. It was a low offer, so on Wednesday, Chris and I counter-offered. The phone call on Thursday evening was our realtor telling us the interested party had countered back, but this time, the offer was only $2,400 less than what we were asking. At this point, we had to ask ourselves do we risk scaring these guys off with another counter or do we just take the hit? If we scare them off, we could end up paying who knows how many more months of two mortgages. So, WE ACCEPTED! Pending a smooth 35-ish days (I think, I didn't actually count), closing will be on July 3rd! Thank the good Lord above! Best night ever!

So, after our happy dances and after Greg and Jana went home that evening, Chris and I stuck around to do a little more work here and there to the house. I finished up shop vac-ing (I don't know how to properly spell that word as a verb) the kitchen cabinets and pondered a bit on how the current formica laminate countertops were going to come off. Turns out, they're just glued on, and that same 9lb hammer we used on the wall works just fine for this too. Just a few taps to underneath the counter top, and it pops right off:

It really is that easy.

Chris worked out in the den taking the paneling off of the wall. Here's a reminder picture of the den:

Such a great room

As you can see, there's a TON of paneling. The good news is that there is drywall behind every bit of it. Hallelujah! We'll keep you updated as to how the paneling removal goes. 

Chris also continued work on the den's tile removal. You can see the end of the tile in front of the den's french doors in the picture above, but here you'll see just how much that tile extends to the kitchen:

We have discovered that taking some swings to this tile with that very popular 9lb hammer works pretty darn good. But be aware, free-flying chunks of tile can be dangerous:

Don't try this at home, or if you do, wear appropriate shoes (not Keen flip flops), clothing (not shorts), and safety glasses. #disclaimer

We are still on track for kitchen cabinet disinfecting and hopefully painting this Memorial Day weekend. We have purchased Sani-T-10 to clean and disinfect the cabinets. We picked this up from Sid Brown Co Inc in Russellville.

Speaking of Memorial Day, we have also chosen this weekend to purchase all of our kitchen appliances for Tanglewood. Holidays=sales at Lowes. The only other holiday that may occur by the time we're ready for appliances is the 4th of July, so we're taking our chances on Memorial Day being the better sale of the two. All major appliances at Lowes this weekend are 10% off with an 18-month no interest financing option when you use your Lowes credit card. That's a huge deal since we are not using a draw on our construction loan for the appliances. (We don't really want to pay for these appliances for 15 years.) So, this afternoon, we are headed to Lowes to purchase a Whirlpool Gold refrigerator, stove, microwave, and dishwasher. We're also going to get a little somethin' somethin' for the den's bar area. We're also going to try to sneak in a 10% "Change of Address" Lowes coupon that we picked up from the Post Office. I'll let you know how that goes.

Readers: Who do you recommend for garbage bin rentals? We are currently using the garage for all of the stuff we're ripping up and tearing down. We're going to eventually have to rent a garbage bin to get rid of it all. Our thought process in using the garage until absolutely necessary is that we'll save money with a one-time pick versus a long-term rental. What/who do you guys recommend for this?