Refrigerator Panel Broke

Looking at this thing, it's actually surprising it held on so long because it was attached with staples!! And the door handle was just screwed into the wood, and not into the metal frame, so every time we pulled the refrigerator door open, it was slowly pulling out the staples. Not cool. It will be interesting to see if Craftsman Design & Renovation is going to fix this for us.

Barrett (our tile guy) still sucks. He originally said he'd be here at 2PM, but then he wrote later asking if he could start work today after 5PM. I said No. I'm tired of him taking advantage of us.

Wheelbarrow Path

Jeff and Aaron made short work of digging out the wheelbarrow path today. They got a layer of gravel down before they had to wrap up for the day. Sadly, I missed the photo opportunity before they covered it up with plastic to keep the dogs off of it.

Aaron is going out of town for more than a week, so Jeff will likely take this opportunity to rest up a bit. Landscape work will resume in a couple of weeks.

I still haven't taken pictures of the bathroom; I should do that. I finally varnished the woodwork over the weekend. As expected, the tile guy's one week absence turned into two weeks. He came out today I thought to finish, but I looked back a while later and he was gone. He fixed a few crooked tiles, but nothing was grouted. Sigh. I guess we'll see if he comes back tomorrow.

Backyard Stairs Finished

Hooray for this absolutely perfect weather we've been having. Except for some yard clean up, the stairs are mostly done.

It's great to have yet another project finished. Most of the time today was picking up the 2 loads of gravel.

They put in 3/4 minus gravel and tamped it

Then they put in and tamped a layer of sand

They finished up with a thick layer of quarter minus gravel

I believe, the top layer of gravel is dark like that because it is wet. It will probably be light grey once it dries out.

Next up, the guys will be moving more dirt to put in a wheelbarrow path down to the lower yard.

Backyard Stairs Progress

Aaron and Jeff made more progress on the backyard stair project today. They couldn't finish it because they need to buy gravel for it on Monday, when they're open again.

I took a few process photos for those of you interested.

Happy 4th of July!

I hope you all have a great Independence Day! We don't have anything special planned, but we'll have a nice meal and enjoy our wonderful weather.

The girls like hanging out supervising Daddy's activities.

Our friend, Storm, has been giving us ferns dug up from her new yard. For now, we're mostly putting them all in the rain gardens. Once the hardscape in the yard is more finished, we'll probably relocate some of them.

Pavers Installed!

Jeff and Aaron worked the last two days installing the pavers in our back patio. Yesterday they worked at putting in the rest of the gravel and then spreading the sand. Later in the afternoon, our block had a block party. I didn't think to bring my camera and take pictures, but there was a great turnout. I'm not sure I've seen that many neighbors outside at once. The weather was gorgeous.

Today, they resumed where they left off. They spread out the sand fairly evenly then tamped it.

At the beginning, Jeff carefully laid out each paver and carefully set it.

Then somewhere along the line, they decided to just fill up the whole patio space and then work on spacing, sloping and setting the pavers. There was about a 2" gap along the edge using the pavers as is, so they decided to just add a piece of wood to fill the gap so we wouldn't have to spend a lot of time cutting them.

Jeff sloped the floor down to the edges, so water will hopefully flow off the patio when it rains. About an hour of fussing later, they started filling the gaps with sand to permanently set the pavers.

The bricks look a little grey right now because they're wet. They sprayed it all down to help settle the sand into the gaps between the pavers. They're also still a little dirty. We'll try and clean them more tomorrow.

Tile Almost Finished

As usual, this will turn into a rant about our tile guy. So, he finally came back for two days on Monday and Tuesday after ditching our job for almost two weeks. Yesterday, he stayed until 10PM! It looked like he might actually finish this week, but nooooooo......he has yet another more important customer. He probably has half a day work to finish this job, but we get to wait until next week (or given his usual pattern) the week after.

Anyway, here is where we are right now.

Aaron and Jeff are still working on the backyard, but it's still mostly moving around dirt so there really isn't much in the way of pictures to post. They're pretty much working when Aaron isn't busy with his other jobs and when the weather is nice enough, so they work maybe two days a week. I think Aaron and Jeff will be laying the patio stones soon.

A friend of ours bought a new house and has been giving us a bunch of ferns that we've been planting in our rain gardens. I should take some pictures of them.