Friday, October 2, 2009 - Timberrrrrrr

Before construction could start, we unfortunately had to take down a 40-foot tall maple tree that had provided great shade for the back two bedrooms. I would often times cringe (or maybe smirk) when I would hear other people talk about their power bills, because ours were low, much lower comparatively, to others. I give all the credit to the trees shading our house. So, now that all of the shade trees are gone and we are nearly doubling our space, I’m sure we are in for a rude awakening. We will have a new HVAC unit, so hopefully it will operate more efficiently than the 16-year-old unit we have chugging away currently. Something else interesting that we discovered through our renovations over the years is that there has been no insulation in the walls. None. Found a newspaper from the 1960s inside one of the kitchen walls when we removed the oh-so-practical knotty pine paneling, but no insulation. So we have added it as we have gone along, and when 20 feet of uninsulated wall comes tumbling down next month when we connect the new structure to the old, hopefully things will be as tight as a drum and insulated correctly. Oh, yeah, what about the tree? It was standing when I left for work and gone when I came home. Except for the chipped remnants remaining from where they ground the stump, you would have never known the workers had ever been there. They left no evidence behind; no limbs, no leaves, no tire tracks. And, as I discovered two days later, they went ahead on their own initiative and ground a big stump in the front yard, leftover from a storm-damaged tree I struggled mightily to cut down earlier in the year. I'm sorry the tree is gone. It really was beautiful this time of year, but I have cut down the amount of leaves I will have to rake this year by about 40 bags.