Outdoor Progress

We have been experiencing some unseasonably warm days here in Buffalo and we’ve been trying to take full advantage in order to get some of the exterior work done before the inevitable snow tundra rolls our way. If you remember from the day one shots, here’s a look at the back patio/sunroom:

Notice anything wrong with that picture? Okay, admittedly there are about a hundred things off-putting in that picture, but let’s focus on just one for now: the 3-inch thick moss covering the roof! It was everywhere. We thought for sure we needed a new roof and had budgeted about $8,000 for that cost. BUT, when we had our roofer come out (Irwin Roofing for any locals out there), he said the roof was actually in good shape and wouldn’t need to be replaced for another 6-7 years. Phew. And he said he could scrape off all the moss and clean the gutters (no small feat considering there were mini trees growing in them) for $300. Sold!

It took four guys maybe an hour or two to scrape off all that moss so we’re glad we didn’t try to tackle it ourselves. Looks a lot better, right? Notice anything else different?

If you guessed less trees, then you’d be a winner! The reason the roof was covered in moss was because the trees were basically resting on the house (just scroll back up to the first picture and you’ll see what I mean). The backyard had three massive trees–one was too close to the house and essentially growing on it and the other ones were in dire need of a good haircut. I wish I had a good before picture but I don’t. But here’s a roof close-up that shows just how much moss there was and how little light was getting to the roof because of all those tree limbs.

So we got some tree guys out to give us estimates–we weren’t sure exactly what we wanted to do (Mr. Bunches loves grass so he was in favor of just taking all three trees down, but two of them were so massive that I knew that would be too expensive and likely unnecessary). Guess who was right? I don’t even need to answer that. Well, the first quote to take down all three trees came in at $4,000! Way too high. And then the same company said they would cut down one tree and trim the other two for $2,000. Better, but not great. So we called the same company we used when we moved into our house (or back then it was probably better described as the house enveloped by a forest, see here). Bob’s Tree Service said they would cut down the one and trim the rest for $975. Again, sold!

Within a day or two, they brought their rig and got to work. Took three guys about 5-6 hours and they hauled everything away. It was a big job. The smaller tree in the middle was the one we were removing.

And then the after:

So much better. We basically just raised the canopy of the two huge trees and got rid of the one. That little bush-looking thing in the middle of the photo is actually a bunch of weeds around the stump of the tree we removed.

We also got our own hands dirty outside. I attempted to clean up the front and side yards and made some progress, albeit this is by no means a remarkable transformation:

It looks a little different even now since we took advantage of the end-of-season landscape sale at Home Depot and picked up a bunch of perennials at 50% off. I’ll try to update this post with a picture of those soon. With the weather probably getting colder any day now, there likely won’t be much additional exterior progress until the spring but that’s okay. We have our hands full with the interior anyways.