While our pool was in progress in early 2020, we started planning our outdoor furniture. The pandemic delaying things somewhat, but by late 2020 we had all of our furniture in place. The furniture really makes the outdoor spaces livable and enjoyable. Around the pool: Back patio Pool house: Front patio Front yard: Decks: ItRead more about Outdoor furniture[…]
Almost a year since the pandemic began, and 7 months since our last post. Life has been mostly about living in and enjoying our house, at a time when we really appreciate having our house to enjoy. After finishing our pool, outdoor BBQ area, chicken coop, doing some landscape refreshing, and adding more solar inRead more about Living in it[…]
When we installed our solar system in 2018, we installed a little more than half what we had the capacity for on the roof. The idea was that we didn’t want to over install solar, so we thought we’d sit back and see what portion of our usage the initial array offset. In the yearRead more about More solar[…]
Our front lawn had never really thrived. It looked stressed and started developing some brown spots a few months after it was installed. And it showed striping, with rows of greener and browner areas. Given that our watering system was in rows under the lawn, this meant that something with the watering was wrong,Read more about Lawn redux[…]
We added an audio system to our pool area. Visible there are 3 of 6 speakers, and the sub-woofer that will get buried in the ground except for the mushroom cap. It is driven by this system in our pool mechanical room. It integrates with our whole house audio system such that we stream musicRead more about Outdoor music[…]
Our chicken coop is done! We picked up our three little chicks last weekend. They will be 6-8 weeks in the brooder in the house, and then they can move to the coop.
Managing a lot of a big job like this, we were bound to make some mistakes. Other than hiring the wrong plumber, most of the mistakes we made were not substantial. One mistake we made had to do with our exterior stairs. They are wood framed, covered in stone, and go from the 2nd floor,Read more about Oops, or how we learned an important lesson[…]
In June and July we added an outdoor BBQ counter which pretty well completes our pool area hardscape. Here it is complete. Note the railings on the left side of the counter. Those are made to look like the other railings in our house, but they are hollow and carry the utilities to the counter,Read more about Outdoor BBQ[…]
We weren’t particular happy with how are outdoor shower off of the garage looked so in May we added a concrete drainage pan, tiled with a flat pebble look, and used flat pebbles around the flagstone pathway nearby. We love how it turned out!
It’s been about 4 months since I last updated this site and a bunch of stuff has happened. Most notably, our pool was finished about a month ago. We started the pool in early March and were originally quoted 2-3 months for completion; it ended up taking about 4 1/2 months until everything was done. Read more about The Pool[…]