Clean and treeless
Things seem to be going pretty much according to plan so far.
Which is to say, I got the books off my living room floor by Sunday night. And I mostly got the papers off my bedroom floor by late Monday night, though only by moving a big stack of them to the closet and leaving three stacks of them (neatened) on one side of the floor.
Yesterday morning, the tree people showed up. No, they weren't ents; they were Kelly's Stump Removal. They arrived on time, set up quickly, and chop-chop, a few quick swipes with a chainsaw and down went both trees. (I'm making it sound easy, and they made it look easy, but it was clearly hard and skilled work. For example, I'm leaving out the parts where one of them climbed up into the trees to cut off limbs. The trees' limbs, not the person's limbs.)
Then they ground out the stumps, which unfortunately resulted in their accidentally puncturing a couple of buried water pipes (like sprinkler pipes, not water mains) that neither they nor I were aware of. So they went out and got better pipe and replaced the sections they'd hit, for a small extra fee.
And they did all this, including lots of work with pickaxe and shovel, on an extremely hot day, in a back yard with no protection from the sun. (At least, none after the trees were gone.) I was impressed. I gave them ice water, but I didn't have enough ice to keep them supplied. Note to self: stock up on ice, and cold water, next time you have yard workers over.
Anyway, so the trees are gone, almost without a trace. Many thanks to Plantgirl for arranging all this!
Then this morning the people from Emma's Eco-Clean showed up. They were half an hour early, which made me grumpy at first because I was very groggy after several nights of not nearly enough sleep, so they offered to go away and come back later. But I figured they might as well go ahead and start.
And they did a great job. In about four hours, the two of them cleaned the whole house, top to bottom. They didn't do the outside of the 2nd-floor windows, understandably, but they did a lot more than I expected them to--for example, they made the beds, which is more than I ever do. And I hadn't moved my junk off my desk because I was expecting they wouldn't touch that, but they moved everything just enough to dust under it. And they did the last few dishes I hadn't gotten to.
So I definitely recommend both companies. They do great work, they're hard workers, and their prices are reasonable.
And my place is looking nice and clean for once, and the yard looks much emptier than usual, all ready for the next stage.
But the next stage right now is sleep.
