Archive for the ‘before’ Category

Landscape Sketchup

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

By the powers of Sketchup! Make It So!

Well, I’m no landscape designer (obviously) but there are a few rules in how we need to approach this whole desert landscaping business – hopefully moving things along with the The Year of the Exterior.

1. Drought Tolerant Plantings (no grass, no horsetail reed, no Papyrus, nothing tropical…i.e. all the things I like.)

2. Simple to maintain (lots o’hardscape)

3. Modern, clean and cost effective (Use one thing and repeat repeat repeat for impact and cohesion. I’m cheap!)

The idea with the front yard is to use a combination of barrel cactus, blue fescue, mexican feathergrass, ocotillo with a palo verde tree thrown in. That big middle rectangular lump is supposed to be a lawn of mounding “blue fescue” but the stupid 2-D bush thing won’t stay put, and it’s not actually fescue at all. I’m having a hard time finding the right plants in the Sketchup 3-D warehouse.

Decomposed granite will function as most of the ground cover with insets of light gray or white pea gravel under the fescue, the palo verde tree as well as in the side yard area. Fun plans for that to come…

For the hardscape I want at least three big boulders and would like to pour rectangular concrete steps from the front door to the sidewalk. We also are planning to build a masonry wall on the right side of the house and along the neighbors property to replace all the nasty fence thing that is happening there now.

Here is plan view of the Brick House compound where you can see the insets of gravel on the DG.

I think kangaroo paw will line the side of the driveway, past the eventual “gate”, to soften up and disguise the orange fence a bit.

The “gate” I’m thinking about building is based on this gate design from Blake Dollahite.

Hog panels! I’m probably going to need to learn how to weld.

We also need to rebuild a more aesthetically pleasing mailbox.

So many big plans, so little money (and skill).

First things first. Paint the house. It’s totally going to happen! And soon.

FILED UNDER: before, exterior, landscape, sketchup

36 Comments »

Slat Screen Finished

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

Before

After

The slat screen is about 90% done. I took some pics while the sun was setting and the color seems to appear a little more yellow than it normally does especially compared with the pre-sealing color.

A few small finishing touches, a little sanding, a little more oil and we will be set to move on and start painting the rest of the exterior. We used Penofin Brazilian rosewood oil (an idea gleaned from this redwood deck) to seal and protect the wood from graying and the elements. The redwood does get a lot of protection from the overhang, but we really want to make sure this installation lasts. It’s been working wonders on the late afternoon heat in the living room.

We finally decided to use Amazon Paint in Whipped White (WHIP) in a satin finish. Well I think…we still have to check it out in person.

FILED UNDER: after, before, DIY, exterior, landscape, patio

15 Comments »

Slat Screen

Monday, April 5th, 2010

BAM. SLATTY.

From Sketchup fantasy to Brick House reality.

Over three days with help from Carpenter Craig and my Mother we banged this bitch out. We ran into a few hiccups along the way and learned a some new skills (like how important a countersinking bit is and when to compromise) and in the end I’m super happy with the result. We still need to do the finishing – like sanding, staining, sealing – which should happen over the next week, but the brunt of the construction is over!

First thing first. We had to wrap the ugly structural poles with wood. When we first moved into the Brick House these poles were wrapped with wood, but it hadn’t been taken care of and was totally split and rotting. It was of the first things we tore down over two years ago…

The entire horizontal slat structure is made of finished redwood – the slat parts are 1 x 3″ / 8′ and the supports are 2 x 2″ / 8′ (that we cut down a bit to fit vertically). The big structural columns are built boxes made with 1 x 6″ planks that we had to rip down to a little under 5″ wide.

The big columns wrapped in new wood.

Day One:

Whoops.

We screwed up a bit. The left side was supposed to be flush, but we were having difficulty dividing the spacing into thirds and tried to center the middle support. BAD IDEA. It was way short on the right side and much arguing resulted on how to fix this design error. We had 16 feet to cover and I wanted the least amount of splicing. The math wasn’t adding up on how to achieve this…

The compromise was to install the middle support off-center to rest between the two front windows and then move the slats over to the left to be flush with the end of the patio.

Day Two:

We fixed the problem. Not the “ideal” Sketchup look we wanted, but it was the best compromise for our weirdly placed structural supports.

We got a little over half of the front slats installed and the side support attached to the crazy hard cement exterior wall.

Day Three.

Construction finished! Once we got a little assembly line setup to install the slats they all went up pretty quickly. We chopped each piece to fit and used spacing blocks and drilling templates to keep them all uniform. That’s some custom shiz.

Here is a close-up of the interior structural beam. We had to cover up the nasty (uneven) steel plate supporting the posts with a little bit of molding. The wood post couldn’t sit evenly on the ground and has a bit of breathing room at the base, so the compromise was to wrap it with some molding at each end.

Now we need some chairs or plants or something to jazz up our new shady porch. Our living room is so much cooler without the late afternoon sun beating straight into it, we get a bit of privacy and the house has some actual architectural interest from the curb. Win, win, win.

Here is a reference for how it looked…

BEFORE: