It started with just rose bushes

This is part of the front of our 1920 house...

See those nasty green bushes under our dining room window?  I really, really, really dislike those bushes.  It doesn't matter whose house they're at.  Those types of bushes are ugly and I think date a house and make it look ugly too.  Not to mention they are spider traps, as some people call them.  Thank heavens I haven't seen too many in there!  

My dream is to have those bushes gone and to replace them with some knockout rosebushes!  It will look so pretty and be so fragrant.  

My dream is coming true today!

Todd rented a digger to pull these bushes and some others on the right side of our house.  We are also jack hammering all the concrete out of our backyard (it currently looks like a very large kennel) so we can have some grass and do a little planting and purtying up back there.  

That's our friend Ken giving Todd, who is in the digger, the sign to start pulling.  Adios, bush!

Rosie and I watched from the dining room window as one by one the nasty bushes were ripped up.  

Then they were loaded on the big flat bed to be hauled to the dump in exchange for some mulch.

Then, the next thing I know, the front of our house looks like this...

Now, we are replacing those little windows that look in to the large guest room downstairs with new windows.  Oh, and we're tarring the foundation to help protect it from cracking and leaking.  Our house was built in 1920, after all.

There is, well, now was, a little sidewalk to the left of the house that didn't really make sense.  Todd wanted it gone, so he, Ken and another friend Joe jack hammered it out and loaded all the concrete on the flat bed too.  

That's Ken jack hammering.  That's Todd's gloved hand explaining to me what's going to happen.  You can kind of see where the old sidewalk was to the right of the lilac bushes.  Where Ken is jack hammering we are also now putting an egress window to the guest bedroom, which has two little windows on the side where Ken is standing.

This is Joe.  See those scrawny bushes lying there?  We were just going to yank those too, because one is dead and the other is part dead and they make me nuts.  This is the right side of our house under the sunroom. I want to put big, blue hydrangeas around this corner of the house.  In fact, there are two already there that I planted last summer.  Todd's plan is to now dig out that whole corner and fix a few cracks as well as tar the foundation here, too.     

Our house is going to look so good when it's all done, both inside and out!  I can't wait to have pretty flowers versus dead or nasty bushes.  I seriously can't wait for grass in the back yard either!  

This is how an old house works.  You want one project done and get four more to boot.  In the end, though, this house will be a neighborhood contender.