Yes I changed the name of this series of post. Things are less chaotic around here and getting to be a little more normal. There's no more holes in the back of the house for critters to come in. There's no more looking up and seeing sky through the roof. There's still no kitchen, but I hope that changes in the next couple of weeks. With that said today I thought I would show you what has been going on outside the house. There have been big changes outside too. I knew we were going to do these things but I thought they would happen after the house was finished. Everything is finished outside except for getting grass, and we would have grass by now had we not had the buckets of rain on Monday night. Hopefully that will be in very soon.
We have this hill beside our driveway that we have hated. It causes all kinds of water problems and we have talked of putting in a retaining wall for years. While the equipment was here we decided to cut it back and go ahead and put in the wall. We removed about 5-6 trucks of dirt from this area.
We use to have several pretty large trees on this hill that we had cut through the years. The root system was still there. He pulled up lots of root balls too.
He dug and dug and dug.
Yes they are standing around looking at something.
This is what they were looking at. The phone and cable companies had both labeled their cables but the power company did not and they were suppose to be buried so deep. These were not that deep. Panic ensued. The power company was called. These were dead wires. They went to no where. So we were good for the night.
Until the next day and he ran into these. Cut the power to our house and the house across the street. Power company kind of jumped at that. So instead of having the power off the next day they had to rush and reconnect it that night.
And by the way, the cable and internet was cut first when he first started taking out the hill. This was our temporary line. Couldn't live without the internet or my college football games.
The hill is dug out even with the driveway. Grass is going to look really good over there.
An old wild cherry tree was knocked down.
Footers were dug.
Fine gravel was laid.
More concrete poured.
And there is our wall.
Now you can see the length of it. In the curved part I want to plant a Japanese cherry tree. The kind in D.C. during the cherry blossom festival. It really looks good.
The next thing we had done was our back patio. We decided to do some stamped concrete instead of having just a slab of concrete. We are very pleased with the way it turned out.
More concrete was poured.
We are having a nice big patio.
All smoothed out and the border stamped.
These were taken from inside the window. They start stamping the concrete. They have silicone molds that they press down. Before they put the mold down they threw some color powder down. That is what is flying.
Here you can see some of the powder and the molds. They interlock together.
The circular pattern in the middle.
Here is the finished stamped patio. The next day they came back and finished up. Just wait until you see it with the sealer on.
They came back the next day and put in the step and my flower bed. I have plans to dig this out and bury some black pots to insert some pots with herbs this spring. It will be really nice to have the herbs close to the kitchen.
Now the patio is sealed. It is all nice and shiny.
The next thing done was the siding was put on the back of the house.
Another look at the back.
For all of you that have ever tried to back out of our driveway the mailbox is gone! We are putting in a new mailbox and it will be moved over some.
Inside the house there have been lots going on but not much that can be seen. Electrical has been run through out the house. Joe has run cable, phone, and internet lines all through the house. We have lines run to any possible place we could think of in the next thirty years. Some of you liked the engineer made kitchen cabinets. He hung our "TV" so he could make sure it was where he wanted it and he had all the cables he needed.
He also tried out the placement of our furniture.
Also if you come by the house you will see places like this. We are trying out paint colors. You will have to wait to see which one we have picked.
More samples.
And more samples. We have painted these two all over the house.
Well that is it for the latest update on the house. I hope the next one I post will show walls. I hope you have enjoyed our journey. I know several of you have wondered how we have lived like this. I will admit I have wondered that too. I just keep telling myself that it won't be for very long. They dug the first shovelful on August 26 and here it is October 15 and we are ready for insulation and sheetrock. It has moved pretty fast at time and then at times it has seemed like they are never going to get finished. Thanks for following along with me.
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