A contrast in the back yard

The snow fell on Monday and it was very cold indeed that day (well below the 32 F freezing point). But by today (Thursday) the sun was out in a blue sky and the temperature had inched up considerably and was in the 50's F (10 + C). See the difference in these two shots.
The brick guys have been hard at work. On the snowy Monday they arrived on site in the afternoon and shoveled snow off the new patio area, the "boardwalk" from the street to the backyard and the grass from the boardwalk to the front porch. Then on Tuesday they showed up and began working again on the garden wall.

By the end of their day today they had the garden wall and the planter box finished. Those gaps in the wall are for lighting. Next on their agenda is to lay the paving brick on the concrete slab. Sitting on top of the wall on the right hand side (photo above) are three samples of paving bricks.

Meanwhile inside much of the drywalling has been done. Today the painter was here (he had been earlier in the week applying the spackle/"mud") working on sanding the drywall and getting a start on the interior painting. I'm a tad curious as to why the walls would be painted before the trim work has been done but...we'll see.

And tonight I hope to get a better nights sleep. Last night we had some excitement with smoke alarms blarring unexpectedly - there was no fire but I was thinking we had a faulty circuit breaker. It swung into the off position three times yesterday and each time that happened it triggered the smoke alarms. But, with some questioning today, it seems that yesterday when the brick guys left the site they left a heater going. Now this heater draws a lot of current and so as soon as we (unwittingly) turned on a light or something else on that circuit inside the house it overloaded the circuit and threw it off and turned on the alarms.

We'll get back to a quiet life soon...surely?