Prepping for garage door install, cutting ivy

Since I signed the garage door contract, I am now prepping the garage for the installation. The crew needs the front 10 feet of the garage cleared for them to work. I am way too disgusted with the state of our garage to post pictures, but trust me it is full. There is a lot of stuff in there that cannot come into the house yet, but is not trash worthy.

We have several pieces of furniture being picked up Monday July 14. It's large pieces we moved from our apartment before we knew how we would use the space we have here. It turns out now that we don't need any of them so they have to go. There is only one charity here that will pick up furniture, and when I called them a month or so ago, they wouldn't come because they will only take 2 or more pieces. I do have two pieces, I just didn't have them dug out of the garage yet. I've begun rearranging the garage so that the movers can pick up the 5 pieces of furniture, but it is a big job! I estimate I have moved everything we own at least 5 times since we've been here (26 months). Imagine moving your entire house 5 times in two years. Not fun.

I continued to work on the toilet paper holder as well.

Another job that I have been working on every Thursday is cutting back the ivy in the yard. We have neighbors on 3 sides whose ivy grows into our yard. Yuck! Several landscapers told me that ivy can harbor rodents. It will also pull our concrete walls down over many years. The ivy has to go! The problem is that the yard waste can only holds so much, so I do a little each week.

Here is how it looked after I was done this week. The ivy did reach all the way to the ground at one point, but much earlier in the process I cut it back to my shoulder height so it has not completely regrown yet.


Just for laughs, here is the same corner when we first looked at the house in late 2005: