Work ongoing

I was dead tired yesterday afternoon so I laid down on the front step for a minute or two. This was the view and the color of the sky blew me away

Joe, working on the half wall separating the master bedroom from the guest room

Mac rolling the driveway as his final act

The view from up the driveway with grading complete

Today Mac finished up his work grading and resurfacing the driveway. We've enjoyed having him here but are glad to have the machine out of the way.

Joe completed priming throughout the whole house and moved on to a little left over framing/sheetrocking project that I had been indecisive about, namely the half-wall that defines the master bedroom, such as it is. There was a simple framed wall in place and today I made a couple of decisions that allowed us to finish it off. It will serve as a headboard for our bed eventually, so there are electrical outlets, a phone jack, and a light switch mounted to turn on and off the over-bed light.

Nancy and I have been working on making some rudimentary decisions about the kitchen and what we should have where in the cabinetry. My job is to start working this into a build-able plan, which I will start soon.

The Quince Bush

The quince bush in the old days before we'd moved the yurt or began work on the house. Its got a great spring bloom.

Moving it to it's new home

When Nance and I first started living in the yurt on the land where the house now sits there was the old garage and breezeway still standing from the original house that burned in the mid-nineties. Additionally, there was this great old quince bush that had been cared for by the original owners. This bush has been a constant on this property for years and it feels really great to be bringing it with us in this new chapter of the story.

When the earth work began last summer we had the quince bush relocated until such time that we could place it back in the landscape around the house. Today was the day it made sense to move it to it's permanent home since Mac is finishing up his grading work.

We'd discussed the location and knew we wanted to use it as a bit of a screen to the neighbors yard as well as a shaping element to the entrance of the house.

You'll notice in the last photo the dark material on the driveway. This is the last bit of work Mac is doing, which is laying grading material in our parking area. I made a somewhat casual decision to go with "Stay-Mat" stone grading material, which, if I understand correctly, is crushed slate. It is a dark blue-ish color that can almost look like pavement. I'm not sure it was the greatest choice aesthetically, but it is the best material to handle potential erosion issues, which is a concern since we are at the bottom of the driveway and historically have had water travel right down into our property. We've done a lot of work to mitigate this but it seems prudent to do what we can if the driveway should deteriorate and water start traveling into our parking area.

One window done

Window in the mudroom complete

Landscaping continues

I struggled mightily to work out the kinks to get this window trim project done. Now that I've done it the completed version is a road map for all the rest, so they'll be easy by comparison. In the end I'm very happy with the finished product.

Mac has been continuing work grading the exterior, shaping the contours and putting down top soil. When he's done I come after and throw down grass seed and hay. We built a minor little rock wall at the base of the slope off the west end of the house. It'll make a great shaded sitting spot on hot days in the summer. A tropical rain event has halted all further landscape work until further notice...

Topsoil

Drips from the roof clean off the newly laid stone to reveal its color

Mac came back yesterday to continue work on the grading project. With my assistance we laid out landscape fabric around the perimeter of the house and then laid a band of 3/4" stone from the foundation out 3' to catch the water coming off the roof.

Once the stone was in place Mac started placing the the topsoil and completed pretty much the back side of the house. It was threatening rain much of the day and by the very end was coming down pretty steadily. I ended the day by putting down a bunch of grass seed and hay in the completed areas.

I rained heavily overnight which most likely will delay Mac's return until things dry out a bit.

Home and Garden

Grading around the house

This is the water line coming through the basement wall running out the water supply in the garden

Nancy working with Scott to move the shed. We used 3" pvc pipe as rollers

Our new water supply in the garden, right near the compost pile

We've turned our attention to completing the site work and grading around the house--finally. For months I've been anticipating filling in all the hollowed out areas and leveling out the rough stuff and having real topsoil rather then hard clay for a lawn.

This work started off two evenings ago by moving our shed for the second time. We moved it back in the spring sometime and felt like that was a good decision, but have since decided to move it again to allow for easier parking. Our pal Scott from down the road came to our rescue with his Kubota tractor and pulled the shed to its new home between ourselves and our uphill neighbor. We need to tweak it, but its a good move.

This morning Mac -- excavator extraordinaire -- showed up to do complete the site work. The first project was digging a trench from the house to the garden so we could lay in a water line for a standpipe water supply in our garden. This went pretty smoothly and he spent the rest of the day clearing up the general area around the parking, the west wall and also took out the massive stump that was right near the yurt. Things are looking pretty slick.

Going, going, gone halfway

Going

going

gone

Today Mac showed up and went to work with his excavator. He dug a trench to run the power and phone to the house and then set to work taking down the breezeway section of the garage. As someone once said about woodworking "Its the set-up that takes time, not the cut" seems to apply to this project. We've been working steadily for the last couple of weeks to be ready to bring the building down and then today it happened and took all of about half an hour to bring the structure down.

Tomorrow Mac comes back to complete the building demolition.