Break on Through to the Other Side

TEAR DOWN THE WALL: The fun never stops here at MPA. This weekend's thrills included finally punching through the wall separating the kitchen and the living room/view.

We've wanted to do that since the day we moved in here about three years ago. Below is the monstrosity looking from the living room to the north.

And below is the ugliness from the other side. The hideous cabinets and oven have to go to, but one thing at a time. We removed the over-the-oven microwave and the upper cabinets will be torn out soon. 

The kids wanted to get in on some of the demo work. 

This isn't the first wall they've helped knock down, that's for sure. 

We only made a little portal for now. I was so fixated on opening the view to the south, that I wasn't really thinking that from the living room we'll now be able to see the kitchen. We're going to have to up our kitchen cleaning game, I'm thinking. 

HOT AND COLD: Meanwhile, in other home improvement fun, this weekend we poured a new concrete pad on the west side of the house. It will serve as a new platform for the new heat pump we hope to have installed within a couple of weeks.

That will be a game changer - no more oil furnace and air conditioning on demand. Hooray!

LOVE BUG: Daises are blooming all over our yard right now. There are hundreds of them. 

I cut some that had been knocked down by a rainstorm and stuck them in the cute little Volkswagen planter Renee bought for us. 

Perhaps not too surprisingly, it turned out there was a bee on one of the flowers.

Speaking of bees, we've had another swarm take off from the western hive. Crazy. That's three swarms this year already. It's actually a good sign regarding the bees' health. The colony is thriving to the point that they grow to a point of overpopulating the hive and take off!