Man, I love Craigslist

After this weekend, we were left with this huge pile of rocks and about 300 pounds of scrap metal from taking the fence down. I also put the old water heater, french doors and a mini fridge out with all this stuff.
By the time I got home from work yesterday, this was all that was left:

The rest of it should be gone by the time I get home tonight. Go Craigslist.

UPDATE: Everything was gone when I got home from work except for one of the large stones. Anyone want a free rock?

http://seattle.craigslist.org/est/zip/1649769424.html

And another update! Here's what our pile looks like now:

DIRTy work

Sarah and I were locked out of the house this weekend so Ron could work on painting the upstairs. Luckily for us it was beautiful out so we took advantage of the weather to start work on the front yard.

Before I get into what we did this weekend, let's do a quick recap of the work on the front yard thus far.

When we first moved in, this was the front of the house (yes, there was a house back there):

After that big fir tree committed suicide by throwing itself on the power lines, we cut down almost everything in the front yard (and a bunch of stuff in the back yard) and made this two-ton pile of yard waste (there's an Audi hidden behind that pile that you can't even see):

After we got all those branches chipped up and hauled away, the front yard looked like this (much better, but not better enough):

Here's what the house looked like from the street after round 1.
Alright, now that we've reviewed what was accomplished in November, back to this weekend's progress.

The chain link fence in front of the house was ugly and served no real purpose. So, I tore that out. Taking the fence down was easy. Getting the posts out was not so easy. However, after a couple hours of work, I was victorious. Goodbye fence.

While I worked on the fence, Sarah dug up all the old plants, along with all the random bricks and stepping stones that were in the yard. There were a lot of them. You can see them all stacked up in front of the house in this pic.

Looks a lot better already, huh? However, now we have a bunch of ugly rock walls all over the yard.Lucy helped by barking at the shovels and rakes. Leroy helped by laying in the sun and rolling in the dirt while we worked. He's growing up fast and is almost Lucy's size already and he's only 15 weeks old. He is also a momma's boy and follows her everywhere.
On Sunday we tore out all the rock walls in front of the house. Holy crap some of those rocks were big! Lifting and moving all those things was hard work, Sarah and I were paying for it today with sore muscles.
You can see here how the pile of rocks is almost as big as my Passat. Sarah really busted her ass with me this weekend and she moved some serious rocks. If this whole nursing thing doesn't work out for her, I can always put her to work standing in front of Home Depot.

I love Craigslist. Where else can you put up an ad advertising 6 thousand pounds of rocks, 300 pounds of scrap metal, an old mini-fridge, old French doors and a busted water heater and get 30 emails in an hour from people wanting to take it off your hands? It's already all been claimed and should be gone by the end of the day tomorrow and it's not costing me a cent to get rid of it. Yay for Craigslist!

By now you're probably wondering just what we're going to do with the front yard now that it's all torn up. The plan is to build a new rock wall, but using a different kind of rock. Also, we're going to build the wall all the way around the yard instead of through the middle of it. Then, we'll fill it in with a few yards of dirt and make it one large level area instead of the two-tiered design it currently has. To finish it off, I'll throw down some sod and enjoy my luscious green lawn.

Speaking of building a new rock wall, we totally scored on Sunday morning. Sarah and I went to Home Depot to pick up some supplies and look at their concrete block selection. When we got home, I was getting a few blocks out of the car that I'd bought to help me figure out how many I would need. As I was unloading the car, my neighbor Barry noticed the blocks and said "hey, are you gonna need a lot of those blocks?" In a glorious stroke of luck it turns out that Barry is re-doing his back yard and taking out a few walls made of the exact same rock we want to build ours out of. SCORE! By the looks of it, it should be enough to complete about 1/2 to 2/3 of our project, which will save us a nice chunk of cash.

Paint update

Painting has commenced! The walls are retextured and we've started priming. Can't wait to get rid of the salmon/baby blue/browish/yellow/pink walls!