Why I need a truck.

Yesterday was filled with more outdoor work. Of course. My parents and Cait were able to remove 1 of the 9 bushes infront of our house while I was at work. For those that don't know, the picture to the left is one of the 9 bushes. Looks kind of small, but the roots are just massive. During this time, my parents found that one of our neighbors was having their roof replace. The contractor was invited over to give us a free estimate. For him to remove and  dispose of the old roof, install a ridge vent, and repair any damage, he quoted us a price of about $7000. Now, for some that may seem like a lot of money and it is. But compare to what Home Deopt was offering, it is a steal. Home Depot's $15,000 price tag includes laying new 20 year shingles over the old existing ones. They're a no-go. But we're getting the written estimae from the roofer today, so keep your fingers crossed.

So, after I got home, my dad and I decided that a 4WD Chevy 2500 w/ a Turbo Diesel engine should be able to rip the rest of the shrubs right out of the ground. And for the most part, it did. After much of this:

And this:

We were able to achieve this:

All of the shrubs are gone!!! I think that aside from the large holes in the ground, the front of the house is looking better. And all it took was a truck. And of course the wonderfuly elbow grease. There seems to be plenty of that to go around. 

While all of that was gong on, my mom and Cait were working on planting the new plants that were purchased. The picture on the left is the end result (for now). There is still some more work that we want to do with this area, but it is already looking so much better. Cait was able to list the shrubs that we pulled out on Freecycle and we recieved numerous offers for people to come pick them up. Hopefully they follow through on that. I'm not to keen on keeping those bushes in the first place, and the storage location is not the greatest. They have taken ove a portion of our side yard. But as long as they're gone by tomorrow i'll be happy. That was really the extend of the work that was done yesterday. Oh, my dad did clean out our gutters and down spouts and hopefully was able to fix the problem spot above the entrance to our patio. But we won't know how well that worked until it rains.  The rest is pictures of the work that we did.

The front of the house:

Savannah's stamp of approval:

And last but not least, a picture Cait took.