Day Three: More Front Yard Work

I was pretty excited to get back to working on the house.  It had been nearly two weeks!  The only problem was that the forecast for central Illinois this week was HOT.  HOT HOT HOT.  As in mid-90's hot with Heat Warnings calling for 105-107 degrees.  ugh.

So I tried to start a bit early this mornin'...I was on site by 8:00 A.M.  Ok, that is not THAT early, but I was pretty happy.  My #1 goal today was to take out the wheelchair ramp.  I knew it had to go from day one, and I was so eager to get it out of the way and just see the house!

The home as acquired.  Wheelchair ramp, overgrown ivy, flower pots.

So I started at it.  I had put an ad on craigslist for free wood, and I had over 10 takers for the used wood.  Everything from using it for a treehouse, wheelchair ramp, and fence.  But almost as soon as I pulled off the first board, I realized that this wood was going to be worthless.  It simply splintered and broke underneath the force of the hammer or prybar.  But the good news was that I then had absolutely NO reason to not be aggressive with the wood.  If it was worthless, then I really didn't care that it broke when I pulled it up!

So I went to town on choppin' it up!

The boards started comin' up pretty easily.  Still work, but I just bypassed the screws.  :)

I think the low last night was in the mid-70's, and the temperature QUICKLY started to increase.  The humidity was thick, and I knew I was going to have a limited amount of time to get my most productive work in.

The project was going along rather nicely.  The boards were coming up mostly easily.

Then around 10:00 A.M. I saw the city trucks go by and collect some limbs and brush from along the street.  I walked over to one of the trucks to ask if he could come back in 20 minutes and take the tree that I would immediately cut down!  I quickly fired up the chainsaw and cut down the branches.  But wouldn't ya know it, the trucks never came back.  That was pretty frustrating!  So I just had a new pile of tree in my street.

Dad showed up around mid-morning and helped me take up the rest of the ramp.  I was soooooooo happy to find a nice sidewalk underneath.  I fully expected (hoped) for it to be there, but I was very pleased with the nice shape that I found it in.

The ramp planks gone...and the tree cut down to size.

But oh the heat!!!  It was warmin' up!  We basically turned worthless between noon and 2:00 P.M.  We went ahead and chopped down the rest of the tree all the way down to the ground, and I also worked on the tree root that I had found beneath the rock landscaping a couple of weeks ago.  I never could get that root out, though.  She is stuck on stuck.

This afternoon we were able to remove five of the eleven posts that held up the wheelchair ramp, but we were tired...soaked in sweat...and pretty worn out.  It was just too dangerously hot.  We called it a day around 4:45 P.M.  We cleaned up our mess of tools and as much of the sidewalk as we could.  All in all, it was a pretty productive day.  We tore out most of the wheelchair ramp, took down the tree, and found a nice retaining wall underneath some wild ivy that we pulled back!

Six posts remaining!  So happy to have found a sidewalk.

I really have high hopes for this house!  This is quite fun.

Tomorrow is looking like more of the same.  HOT HOT HOT.  It's actually supposed to be even hotter tomorrow.  Ugh.