Bringing down and sanding off

Invasive wisteria vine

What do you do with a massive 60 some year old wisteria vine?  If it's smothered your crape myrtle and threatening to do the same to your live oak, you have it cut down, of course.

Styron's tree service spent the better part of a day cutting down the vine, the crape myrtle, and several other stumps and trees in the back yard.  It took 4 hours to cut out the wisteria and crape myrtle and it broke my heart to see our shade go as well as several nice branches on the live oak.  But hopefully we've saved the rest of it, and we'll plant a new crape myrtle to fill the bare spot.

                                                                 The big hole in our yard

Paul finally finished adding new floor joists and piers and he's been slowly jacking up the house.  Slowly, the floor is getting more level.  We took a 3 day break and spent it in the mountains, where we stopped at Preservation Hall, an architectural salvage store outside of Asheville.  We were happy to find the upper half of four 3 over 1 windows.  They match the original wood windows in the house and we plan to install two of them in the front of the added on workshop, and two on either side of a future fireplace.

Now that the underground work is mostly finished Paul headed for the roof and fresh air.  He's tearing out an old furnace chimney in preparation for moving some walls inside.  I finished sanding the living room and began working on sanding doors and the next room.  We love the old, wide trim around the windows, doors and baseboard, except when it comes to scraping and sanding off all those layers of paint.  Will the sanding ever end?

Smiling?

Living room ready to patch and paint