Good Neighbors

Chris and I received a nice note in the mail last week from the family who live in the house across the street from us.

Aw shucks :)

Let's Get to Work!

Progress on our living room has been slow, but we're starting to make some headway. Most recently, we've come to a decision on the crown molding profile. Easier said than done. This has been a topic of conversation ever since we moved to Hazard Ave. (Interestingly, the house didn't have original crown when we moved in.) Being a "formal" living room and all, we want it to stand apart from the other more casually used rooms in the house. It needs to be a little fancy.

We've been back and forth on just how fancy. We both love jumbo dentil molding.

J. Savage Gibson, House Beautiful

But ultimately decided that this may not be right for our house. Plus it has a high probability of looking like a hack DIY job if done incorrectly. So we finally settled on a profile that still has a lot of detail but is a little more subdued: egg and dart.

Melissa Hawks, The Well Appointed House

Beautiful, no?

Chris has been playing around with some molding scraps and a sample piece of egg and dart.

I like where this is headed.

Going...Going...Gone

The Norwood Maple in front of our house was probably planted around the time our house was built. We were aware when we moved in that the poor tree was diseased and would need to be removed, but I dreaded the thought. One of the charms of my neighborhood is its streets lined with established trees.

Last summer it was looking especially bad. It was clearly time to take action.  Where we live, the trees planted on the curb are the property of the city, so I called them to take a look.

Then completely forgot about it.

Last week we were a little surprised to see half of it gone! 

Seems it is our now responsibility to get rid of the unsightly stump. 

Update: I love having a blog with such knowledgable readers...Per some of the comments, I contacted our city's forestry division to ask about the stump. The receptionist told me that the city WILL remove the stump, but it may take up to 10 months. She said we could remove it ourselves with a permit. Thanks readers!