A property like ours is required to collect any water runoff and put it through some earthen filtration before we can dump it out into the storm drain system. Over the last two weeks the landscapers have dug large trenches around the property for the drainage system. These are pretty massive 6 inch lines thatRead more about Drainage and grading[…]
The rock wall is being repaired now. We have three main areas to fill in. The first is the old driveway mouth. They’ve made great progress. The new section vs the older sections of wall is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, the new sections has a real foundation and has rebar going troughRead more about Rock wall repair[…]
The old driveway to the house was part of a double driveway with our neighbors To remove this, we had to move the curved and straight part of the curb over to the mouth of our neighbors driveway. These are made of sandstone and are massive, as they go an addition 12 or so inchesRead more about Curb and gutter[…]
The last of our property line fencing went in over the last month. We did the first stretch back in May. In late July, we tore out the jungle along our back property line, and then rushed to complete that section of fence before our neighbors had a wedding shower for one of their childrenRead more about The last of the property line fencing[…]
As we just moved in, I’ve been delinquent in posting frequent updates to the progress. It’s been quite a few weeks of hard work. Two weeks ago, the poured a new section of sidewalk and the bio-filtration basin walls. Here they are in before being poured. You can see the the bio-filtration basin walls areRead more about Sidewalk and bio-filtration basin[…]
It’s been so long since we’ve been able to get onto our property without walking over dirt, it is almost unbelievable. Yesterday, they poured the front steps and walkway, and today, we can walk on it. It was quite a project, and required 10 yards of concrete. We colored the concrete, a slight sandstone tint. Read more about Front steps[…]
Do you see a beautiful yard through all this? I’ve been looking at this patch of bare dirt for so long, it is had to imaging it becoming a real yard. We are starting from scratch, meaning, we have to install everything – irrigation, drainage, lighting, do the final grading, and plant. Our landscaper tellsRead more about You gotta have vision[…]
We have a lot of sanstone from the basement excavation, but to fashion it into specific shapes, like the stone cap for our seat wall, would be prohibitively expensive. The alternative is a process popularized by a local contractor named Mike Schlagel, and aptly called Schlagel-stone by the local contractor types. It is concrete thatRead more about Faux sandstone[…]
Our local Santa Barbara sandstone is great, but it is an expensive treatment to apply. For a long seat wall in the back yard, we opted for a faux sandstone cap instead, made from colored and textured concrete. Here is the 8″ block wall that is our starting point for the seat wall. They formRead more about Fake sandstone[…]
Our property borders four different neighboring properties. On one entire side, we teamed up with our neighbords to build a block and plaster retaining wall. There is a short stretch of the property line where we don’t want to put in a wall with a large footing as it might upset the roots of aRead more about The Fence[…]