Our to-do list

We haven't purchased a riding lawn mower, new or used, yet. As soon as DH finds one on Craigslist it's either sold or they don't respond to his inquiry, so probably sold, too.  Which of course is giving him time to think of lots of other things to spend the $4500 from the sale of the car. At least it's all going to things we can use and improvements to our old home.

Here's what we have spent it on so far:
Some kind of man tools...impact driver and drill kit combo and misc drill bits, etc  $272
Soaker hoses  $37
Thuja trees (55 to be exact!) $300
Grass seed  $76
Laminate Flooring $344
More man tools...compound miter saw and table $602

Yes, we have planted 55 trees - again! Somewhere in my old posts is last Fall, when we bought the tiny little thuja trees from an Amazon seller and planted 75 trees along the front and side of our property. They were tiny little things, probably 8-10 inches, but supposed to grow 2-3 feet a year. That hasn't happened at all. In the meantime, spider mites took out most of the 21 front trees, but the side ones still were ok, just growing very slow. We tried to save the trees from the spider mites -at a cost of almost $200 in miticide and root treatment! Every little tree dug up, the roots treated, replanted and then the leaves treated (dumb!). The mites still took over.  I saw bigger, nice full trees for $5 at Home Depot, so we bought 21 to replace the dying front trees. So much bigger and hopefully grown enough already to withstand the spider mites. With the exception of one tree, so far so good.  Last weekend we purchased 55 more to put down the side of the property. These were also $5, but a little bit bigger (yay) than the original ones I bought at Home Depot. Pots were a bit bigger size and the trees were taller. Now we just wait and hope they grow nice and big.

DH needed the impact driver and drill because he let DS take a good portion of his tools with him (he needs them  in his race shop) and *wanted* the saw with the table to make the putting in the kitchen floor easier. When we did DD's bedroom floor we borrowed a saw, but DH has several inside the house projects in mind for the fall/winter and doesn't want to keep asking to borrow it.

So, we have $2850 left. Still enough for a used John Deere mower, if he can find one and he has use of the borrowed one (we've had for 6 years!) for the rest of this lawn mowing season, so we really have until next spring to get one.

We picked up the flooring Friday afternoon and will finally have a new kitchen and laundry room floor soon! Currently we have the original vinyl flooring put in the place 24 years ago. It's past time for a new floor, to say the least. I know DH will want to start on it today, even though the flooring hasn't had 48 hours to acclimate to our house temperature. He's too impatient. I'm so excited to soon  have a nice kitchen floor!

Other projects down the road - still our bathroom remodel - or at minimum the floor replaced - the WHOLE floor, sub floor needs to be replaced.It's been too scary of a project for us non DIY-ers, but DH is feeling more confident now that he has a little experience and the right tools. It will be a costly project to at minimum replace the floor, toilet and shower, but if we can at least do some of it ouselves, that should help bring down the cost.

And lastly (at least for what we have on the to-do list for now) is DH can use the saw to build me the garden arbor I want, rather than purchase one.  Hopefully all these projects will keep him busy and somewhat sane once the weather turns and he can't be outside working on landscaping projects.