Archive for the ‘exterior’ Category

Slow Patio Progress

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Still more slow progress on the patio pavers

The Boy finished straightening up the first hundred or so pavers and the weather keeps ruining all our plans to finish up the last sixty. Stop raining. Stop.

I just looked to see when we started this whole patio project – December 30, 2009. Two months! It didn’t feel that long ago that we started and we still have so much further to go. Something even more depressing – when did we fisrt start working on painting the exterior? August 29th, 2008. It’s been YEARS!

Looks like 2011 may be the year of the exterior as well…possibly 2012.

Trim

Friday, February 26th, 2010

SoCal Edison sent a crew to come trim the HUGE tree in our neighbors backyard. It’s been interfering with the power lines and is an all around “nuisance” so accordingly it needed to get hacked up.

It’s hard to describe the scale of this tree. It’s big, just really massive. The only way to access it is for trimming was on our freshly installed gravel. All the utility guys love to use our big open driveway…

That’s the trimmer dude. He kept waving when he saw I was taking pictures. He’s so high!

I’m glad they put so many cones out. Who knows what kind of traffic or pedestrians could walk into the “trim zone” in our backyard.

NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO. Our fresh and lovely driveway covered in pine needle debris. The tragedy.

They gotta come out back next week and finish up, but they really butchered the crap out of the tree. It’s all flat and naked on our side.

Patio Progress

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Last weekend we finally started working on the cement paver grid that surrounds the fire pit. We ended up going with the cheapo 12 x12″ gray cement pavers from our local building supply. Already 100 pavers down and it looks like we are going to need about 60 more to finish.

Yeah, some rows are still way wonky. We didn’t get as far along as I thought due to a rain delay (I was super hoping to be done this weekend). But you can kind of see how it’s beginning to shape up. Once all the pavers are straight and square and the gravel is filled in and we paint the house and finish the “bar” or “planter” area to the left and fix the fence and fix the fire pit and redo the roof and put in the hot rolled steel edging and make a vertical garden and finish the planter bed and landscape the other half the yard and replace the ugly front fence…then we will be done! Oh and the lights. Gotta figure out some exterior lights.

Totally doable? Right? RIGHT?!

Oh, I just got so depressed.

We did grow an accidental lawn with all the recent rain. Oops. As soon as it gets hot it will all die off, but for now it’s a nice bit of green against the dreary exterior.

Oh yeah, that’s a nice paint job on the chimney…guess who doesn’t have a ladder!

One more thing, that patched together fence? Put it out of your mind homies, it’s on notice. Looking to be replaced with something a little less ghetto, a little more solid and a little more cement based. Eventually.