Gone

This beautiful old tree is gone. It was taken down on Monday. You can see how it towers over the neighborhood, even above other nearby trees. But you can also see how it is sparse and how many branches are already dead (and we'd already removed some of the worst).

This is going to be a story with many pictures - which is funny because actually we weren't home to take most of the pictures, but between security camera footage and some house guests who left mid-day, we documented it pretty well. It was tragic but had to be done, as you'll see from the pics.

The crew showed up at about 8:20 and got right to work. They were still there when I got home at 3:00 and wrapped up around 4:00. We weren't thrilled with the outcome (I mean besides the fact that we don't have a tree anymore), but I'll leave that explanation for the end.

First round, the upper branches - they started in the driveway with the cherry-picker, working from the lower branches on up to the top:

Here they are lowering a branch:

 Even better - our friends got a video of one of the limbs coming down:

Then they left to catch their plane and we moved on to the security footage (D remembered to move our front door security cam that morning so that he could check out the action).

Here's where the sad part happened. First I need to give you a little back story. The night before, we learned that a friend of ours, who is building a giant boat (seriously, it's amazing - check it out) told us that white oak would be very useful for some of the internal floor structure. We worked out with him that we would ask that they leave us giant lengths from the trunk and that he would take them away with a flat-bed tow truck the following weekend. We'd already discussed having them leave us firewood and a cross-section of the trunk anyway, and they indicated that leaving the wood behind might reduce the price, so this seemed like win-win. Our price goes down, our friend gets valuable wood, and our tree lives on as a part of a boat. We knew that this was not in the contract, so we had to hope for the best.

D stayed at home in the morning to wait until the crew showed up, to explain what we were looking for. The foreman sadly replied that it wasn't possible because of the power lines. They would be removing the trunk in small pieces, not as one giant trunk. Bummer.

Apparently, D didn't make it clear to them that small was 6 feet or more, not necessarily the whole 20 feet or so.

And so it was heartbreaking to see this picture at 2:10 - just a giant trunk to go:

 This one at 2:25 - they just took down a giant piece! This is exactly what we asked them for, yay!

And then this one, at 2:42. Our precious trunk, chopped into tiny and unusable pieces. Heartbreaking.

Miscommunication, and nothing in the contract, so really nothing to be done. I got home early enough to talk to the crew and express my despair, but obviously it was too late. The foreman thought we could only use the whole trunk up to the split, when less would have been fine. No boat after all, it seems.

I was greeted with this view when I arrived home from work that afternoon:

They were still doing some final chainsawing and mostly just blowing away wood chips. Our security camera captured the stump grinding:

It was clear from the debris that taking the tree down was the right decision - look at all that hollow wood just waiting to come down, say this winter in a heavy snowfall?

The trunk, however, had been completely intact, sadly. I was dismayed to see that not only did they misunderstand us on the trunk, but they had forgotten to give us a cross-section. I managed to spot one fairly large piece in the truck that they removed and left for me (and for our boat-building friend, though obviously this is much less than he hoped for). I don't think it's from the main trunk because it is small, but I suppose it's better than nothing.

They did remember to leave us the cord of firewood (half a cord for us and half for our neighbors). We'll have to split it (and move it away from the mailbox - move it completely away from the house, in fact). We were reminded by a friend to let it age a year before we use it, so the moisture doesn't ruin our chimney.

I was going to talk about our other complaints but I think this post has grown big enough. I'll save those issues for next time.

Bye tree!

Goodbye/Hello

Our big oak isn't gone yet but it's days are numbered (literally, since they are coming to cut it down in about 2 weeks). In the meantime, we've been trying to decide what else to plant in its place. The new tree won't go where the old one was, for a few reasons. The first reason is that given the root rot, the arborists suggest waiting about a year to replant in the same hole. The second reason is that it's right below power lines, so a new tree would quickly grow to be a nuisance. The third reason is that it will be nice to pull into and out of the driveway without a small but persistent worry that I'm going to hit a tree.

So the new spot will be a few feet away on the other side of the driveway, between the two holly trees (which are our neighbor's). Between the power lines that run to our house and the ones that run to our neighbor us and hopefully far enough away from the driveway to avoid having the roots cause damage (but still close enough to the driveway to be on "our" property).

Which bring us to the next big decision - what tree to plant. Our neighborhood prides itself on having big leafy trees that create a shady canopy, so we want to help by replacing what we take down. However, our arborist suggested that the new location (and indeed, probably the old location, if we start from scratch there) should not have quite such a giant tree. I am in love with sycamores but even our town recommendation is that they are too big and unmanageable. And I will be happy to not have the annoying acorns that drop yearly from our white oak. We briefly considered a gum tree per our arborist's suggestion, but learned that they drop even more annoying sticky "gum balls" all over.

The arborist thought our best bet would be a Zelkova serrata and we are about to bite the bullet and say yes. It grows pretty quickly and seems to grow up (rather than "out" - which was the landscaper's concern because it would be over the driveway). It can sometimes have exfoliating bark - something I really love about sycamores, so that's good. It won't get as high as the oak, which is disappointing, but that's almost not our problem as the time frame for it reaching its max height is likely well after this house gets new owners (no imminent move planned, but still we are talking about 20 years out or more so its unlikely we will still be here). Here are some pictures of a Zelkova from the web:

Close up of the leaves:

We asked around the neighborhood and people seem to like them, so hopefully we will too. What do you think? We're about to tell the arborist "yes" so if you have any opinions about Zelkovas, please comment right away.

Small Cost Big Change

You know you're in for a trip down memory lane when you link to one of the first ever posts on the blog.

We inherited the burgundy in our guest bedroom from the decor in our old apartment, picture here, and even before that to our first apartment over 10 years ago, when we shopped exclusively the line of "What is the cheapest thing that will cover our windows/keep us warm/etc." It wasn't bad, and we made it work - the comforter cover, lamp shades, and curtains were a little worn and faded by now, but they were tolerable.

Still, we never particularly loved them. And when we finally re-installed the cordless blinds one year after taking them down to have new windows installed, I left the red curtains down and wondered whether it wasn't time to replace the outdated burgundy.

D and I decided on blue, to match so much of our house color scheme, and purple (since the accent wall already was) and I went to work. I found a really lovely organic cotton duvet cover that was so much better than the ripped-then-stitch-witchery sealed and stained burgundy cover. In perfect coincidence, they have pillow shams in a silk/cotton blend (remember, I'm weird - these things matter to me) that seemed like the perfect matched shade of blue despite being from a separate set. They have a cute tie-on look, too.

That sort of ate up our budget though, because we didn't really want to put too much money into room that we use so rarely. We tried buying a set of cheap curtains from Target but the color wasn't a good match and they looked cheap, which was exactly what we were trying to avoid, so those went right back to the store. But to our surprise, we still had some purple sheers my mom gave us as temporary window covers from back when we moved. They might not be our "forever" curtains, but they were free, which is infinitely better than cheap. We also had some lamps in the basement that hadn't quite made it to the donation bin from our first apartment that worked in a pinch, after we saw how expensive lamps are.

Finally, we removed the sad, faded 2' x 4' rug that wasn't much better than a front door mat, and dug out the second flokati rug we bought after realizing how much we loved our first one and how much we feared it would wear out quickly (5 years later, still going strong).

So besides the bed linens, this was an upgrade from random stuff we had laying around the house. Though they still had their costs.

Cost the first - apparently cheap lamps with cheap bases disintegrate into a pile of concrete, sand , plastic, and...I don't even know what else when picked up for the first time in a long time. That was a fun clean-up. Without a base, the big stand-up lamp is very unstable, but it works wedged into the corner.

Cost the second - to make room for the big and cozy rug, I had to push the bed to the left, meaning that the frames are no longer centered. It bugs me. But not so much that I want to fix it. These frames are the kind that require a nail at both ends instead of the middle, so shifting them will leave me with a visible hole to fill AND the pain of having to recenter them and re-level them. It can only be seen from inside the room, so my plan is to ignore.

My view from the hallway is nothing but cozy:

Have you had any cheap decor upgrades lately?

New Addition to the Family

After D inadvertently caused a scandal with his blog title earlier this month, I thought I'd continue the theme and tell you all about our new addition: a beautiful new vacuum. (No offense, blog readers, but you will not be the first to know should any *real* new additions join the family.)

We've tried for years to figure out the best way to clean our floors, which range from wood to tile to area rugs to wall-to-wall carpet and are spread out on three floors. We finally gave up on our Dyson upright, which just couldn't handle the hardwood or tile very well and relegated it to the basement's wall-to-wall carpeting (no more having to drag it up and down two flights of stairs) and bought this pretty fellow:

A Miele C1 Titan, retail price of a hefty $600. Fortunately someone we knew recently got theirs using airline miles and when I noticed that I had about 75,000 about to expire at the end of the year, I knew I should go that route too (get it, route?). With no trips planned, this felt basically like free money.

While I have nothing but hatred for airlines and for flying, using my United Miles for this was surprisingly easy. I was short a few miles, so they charged me $60. I kept expecting to see more fees or expensive shipping tacked on while going through the purchase, but nope - just a flat $60 to make up the 10,000 or so remaining miles. This is way cheaper than trying to buy or gift miles to purchase an actual flight.

How does it work? So far so good:

We haven't had to replace the bag yet (yes, this one has a bag - how old-fashioned) or vacuum anything particularly challenging. But it seems to work well transitioning between rug and wood, so we don't have to sweep as often, so that's a win. We still use a sweeper on our fancy hand-knotted rug to get the cat fur off, but we can set this one on low suction to get rid of crumbs without feeling like it's going to destroy the rug.

I guess we'll just have to see if it stands the test of time. But at $60, I'm not quite so concerned about whether this was the right decision.

Back That Branch Up

I committed a blog sin by forgetting to take a "before" picture, but trust me when I tell you that the big magnolia in the back yard was starting to crowd our garage roof.

D originally wanted to have the tree removed entirely but I enjoy its shade and fragrant flowers (though not the giant pods that seem to fall constantly and are large enough to cause a twisted ankle). In any case, we decided we would try to trim it ourself with an extendible tree pruner. With a freshly installed sharp blade, we went to work attacking the branches leaning on the roof. Fortunately none were so squashed up against the roof to make us fear the falling branch would grab a slate on its way down.

 You can sort of see the problem branches from here....a little. If you use your imagination:

 The sharp Fiskars blade made surprisingly quick and satisfying work. We removed 3 branches (D did 2 and I did 1) in about 10 minutes.

Here's the "after" picture from the angle we should have used first. You can see none of the branches  are touching anymore

It took longer to trim the branches, especially after we realized that our handsaw was incredibly dull. A 2 day delay to wait for a new 15'' handsaw from Amazon, and we were set:

We're saving these for firewood so D cut it into usable pieces, all stacked and ready for winter.

This was a very exciting project, given that we started out getting estimates to remove the whole tree for about $500 and spent a total of about $20 for new saw blades instead. I'm sure I'll continue to curse the tree out when I'm cleaning up the pods, but I'm glad we decided not to take it down. At least now I know how easy it is to take off a few low-hanging, annoying branches.

Little Brother

We never seriously considered getting a full-service security solution after being robbed. Way too expensive and hopefully not very necessary. But we did toss around the idea of self-installing something. The serious self-rolled security systems involve setting up a server to record video along with several expensive cameras. Just too much money and hassle. Should we ever make our house part of the internet of things, we may install cheap motion sensors on the main entry doors and ground level windows with some kind of hub (this or whatever Apple does?). But there's too much flux and uncertainty about which system will win out. So that project is on hold.

Our main concern is that packages get left on our stoop. Since our street is so highly trafficked, we are always worried about something getting lifted. So some kind of video camera or still capture system would work. A super popular one is the Dropcam. But this works by streaming all of the video through your home internet connection to Dropcam. So should Russian or Chinese hackers compromise Dropcam, they could watch your home camera from the comfort of their desks. But worse, Google bought Dropcam. Which means that eventually Google will decide to use the video streams to figure out how to sell things to you. So we wanted something we had some control over.

My brother is using this camera to monitor his front door and recommended it.

Nothing fancy. 640x480 resolution. IR sensors for night vision. Wireless network connection. But what I liked about it was 1. it's really cheap and 2. you can log directly into it and control it. We have it setup to transmit photos whenever it detects motion to an email account. D-Link isn't involved at all. The camera can't be accessed from outside our network. So it is (sort of?) secure. 

I originally put it in our bay window but the IR sensors don't work through the glass and I couldn't get a angle on our porch. I did a little bit of googling and it seems that a bunch of people are using them outside without too many problems. It's really cheap, so I think it's worth a try. 

Our walkway. The camera was originally next to the potted plant in the bay window. Now it is behind the gray pot center right.

Shielded pretty well from the elements from the bay widow overhang and the pot. It's also right on top of the outlet. 

The capture photo resolution is pretty lousy. But better than nothing. I think it'd only be useful for a actual theft for capturing the time and a general description of the thief. Unless the thief had really distinguishing tattoos. Since the emails get sent a minute or two after it gets triggered, I could conceivably catch a robbery in action.

Unfortunately a spider has decided that this location is great. Apparently a little spider walking right in front of the camera is enough to trigger the motion detector. Each morning I have a dozen or so captures of this little dude walking around.

Here he is during the day. 

I've removed his web several times, but he is quite clever. He immediately drops to the ground and scrambles away when I touch his web. A few hours later, a new web appears. I guess I have to keep knocking his web down to discourage him. 

Aside from spiders, the camera seems to work fine. The resolution is terrible, but there's a fairly steep price penalty to get a HD camera. We plan on getting at least another camera to cover the basement entrance. 

More blue chairs, more blue shopping

We've sort of dropped the chair thing as our house budget has had other plans (new AC...), but recently we stumbled into an unexpected choice: Room & Board. For anyone familiar with this store, you'll know that they make really fabulous wood furniture in the USA, but their price reflects their quality. We often oogle the furniture but alas, it is not meant to be for our price level.

So imagine my surprise when we wandering into a store to discover that the chairs there are in the same price range as the ones at Crate and Barrel and only slightly more than West Elm. And they come in dozens of colors!

We sat on one or two that we liked and then created a list from their online selection that would definitely prompt a revisit to test in person. Quinn, Braden, Abbott, and Cole all had the clean lines and not overly-stuffed look we are going for.

I was delighted to see that swatches were free and you could order up to some huge number like 20, so I picked all my favorite blues and waited.

They arrived and I was so excited to check which one matched best...

Only to discover that, yet again, my taste is apparently unique. They aren't bad, they are just blah. (I forgot to photograph them on the same pillow I did last time, but the blues are kinda the same.)

Oh well, I'll keep looking until we find the perfect match. West Elm just got some new colors in, plus I'm sure we'll find some other good candidates at other stores where we never expected to find them.

Strapping improvements (toddler proofing part 1)

When we installed our new shelves in the basement we took the precaution of attaching each one to the wall. We did not do that for the furniture in the brave new baby's room. Which is stupid because the wardrobes are large, heavy, and have drawers which may eventually prove to be tempting climbing steps. In our defense, she is still showing no interest in climbing. But who knows when that will change. So I spent an afternoon strapping her wardrobes to the wall.

I did order some Ikea straps through their just-announced recall program, but they hadn't arrived yet and we already had some generic wall straps.

The process was fairly straightforward. Find stud.

Attach one set of straps to the stud.

Attach other strap to furniture.

Do it in pairs.

Attach together.

Pull out as much slack as possible. One of the straps is just slightly visible on the tallest wardrobe, because the studs were in inconvenient positions, but otherwise the whole setup is invisible.

Randomness on a Saturday

I've been gathering up little tidbits that don't quite add up to a blog post, so I thought I'd dump them here more for my own ability to keep track of things, rather than for you, dear reader(s). And so, without further adieu or any ability to turn these into a single theme, here goes:

1. Mouser kitty caught a tiny little mouse this week. Usually they only seem to come in during the colder weather, so this tiny toddler-of-a-mouse was definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time.

2. Our own mouse-of-a-toddler now has free rein on the main floor, because we took down the gate:

She seems to know she's not allowed to go down to the basement alone (made easier by her laziness at doing stairs, so she usually demands mommy or daddy carry her down), and she more or less responsibly colors on her own in the office. We'd been leaving it open for a few months now, and after she tripped over the threshold the other day, we decided its time was up. Leaving the sticky cups up for now in case of a potential child #2 (or even just a party with lots of children).

3. We've been treating our hawthorn tree all year for rust to avoid the orange spots of last year. We have been less than diligent but it's much better than last year, though still seems to have traces of rust on the leaves. I'm a little disappointed because we selected a hawthorn because we thought they were supposed to be pretty hardy, and spraying it with chemicals weekly is not ideal.

 It has grown a little bit, as has the toddler in whose honor it was planted.

4. Reconsidering my love of sycamores after seeing how much bark they shed in my neighbor's yard, though a friend who has several says that they easily mulch into the ground when mowing. Still not sure what (or even where) to plant after we take our oak down this fall.

As I said, very random. Some longer posts on the way, but it's been a pretty lazy summer housewise, so don't get your hopes up for too much.