The inside

When we first moved in, we lucked out and found a really good general contractor through a friend from mining, who happens to have also been a geologist - Theo. He re-roofed the house just before we moved in, and just in time, as the roof above the dining room sprung a leak. In rapid succession, we designed a new ensuite in the master bedroom, laid new Jatoba hardwood floors in the same room, and had all the other hardwood refinished in the house. Unfortunately, we were so lucky as some to have nice quarter sawn long board oak underneath the old carpet, but it was still serviceable, albeit a bit creaky.

The photos from that time was were not put up on the web yet, I'll be doing that soon and putting up posts showing the details soon. So look for them!

Front yard

One of the first projects we tackled was to remove this hideous hedge in front of the house. Since I was worried about security (these things were huge - like 7 ft tall) and full of bugs, my father in law used his old pickup and we used mattocks and shovels and were able to remove all of the hdeges, leaving a lot of weeds in places where they were. The lawn was also full of European Chafer beetle.

Here are a couple of pics of what the front yard looked liked:

These photos are from June of 2005. To give you an idea, the hedges were above the two small bushes that you see to the right of the steps, and from the street view in the last entry, you would not have been able to see the house.

Finally, our house blog begins

After stalling and deliberating for 3 years, we've decided to blog the transformation of our house so that we have a record of the changes. There won't be many updates, but we'll try to add new stuff as it happens.

So this is the house we bought 3 years ago in May.

3000 sq. ft on South Slope: