Grooming a tree

I LOVE climbing things...Trees, buildings, mountains! This is a job I did this week for a regular client who has a tree in his yard that needed thinning out. Problem is this tree is full of thorns! I used a ladder to get a safety line into the crown of the tree,  then got into the tree using a hand saw to clean the centre. Later I used a pole chainsaw to reach the outer branches from inside the tree. Then I chipped all the cut wood into bags and removed it from the site. I did not want to spoil the look of the tree just thin it out some...Before and after shows the thinner tree but the same character.

As part of the shared skills deal I have with a friend Dave, he designed the signage for my truck and I helped him with a couple of problem trees at his place. Here is the link to his blog where you can see me in removing a difficult dead tree...

http://davessecretgarden.blogspot.co.nz/2013/01/getting-expert-help.html

...Dave is a great artist and graphic designer and an intrepid gardener too, check out his blog its a quality read!

Converting a storeroom

This client just bought a home and wanted to turn an old unused store room into a second study. The room has no windows or natural light and has several service pipes on one concrete wall. There was no insulation and being under the house was cold, not condusive to hours of study! It needed lining and something had to be done to hide the pipes on the wall and cover up the ceiling beams. I gave him a few ideas on how to finish it off and we reused an cabinet he had removed from his bedroom which I adapted to fit on the ledge and cover the pipes. Neat!

finished pics to come soon!

Crushed stone walkway

My client was putting her home up for sale but felt that the paved area outside one of the bedrooms was looking unfinished and wanted a pathway and surround added to finish it off.

This took me a day, but there was the small matter of getting a cubic meter of stones to the site...

I used a weed mat cloth to prevent the grass growing through the stones later ( In New Zealand everything grows like mad!) as I had no time to spray the grass with a weed killer. The ground was sloping so the path needed to be quite deep to het a decent flat finish, so this path used up 1. 5 tons of stone!  It was 13 m long.

Bedroom wardrobe

A regular client of mine asked me to build a wardrobe in the master bedroom of her home. ( not sure why a modern new home didn't have one!)  I have never done one of these before, so it took me about 6 hours to construct, the stud was 2.4m high and the sliding doors were only avaiable in 2.0 m high so I made the top are a storage area behind hardboard sliders. My client had some storage units she wanted to use inside so I didn't build any shelves just a hanging rail.