Summer of 2010 Side Yard Project

This ended up being a massive project.  My brother in law Jon was a huge help! Thanks Jon! The old fence was badly rotted, so much so that screws were no use. The idiots that built the fence used non pressure treated wood to hold back the dirt.  These were about 12"x2" boards with pieces completely rotted away.  This added a serious amount of time and labor to the project.  I forget the actual quantities, but I think we had over 4000lb of gravel, 10+ bags of mortar, and a couple tons of cinder blocks.  We placed the blocks where the rotted wood used to be and filled them with gravel.  We placed mortar and lids on the cinder blocks to prevent erosion and last forever.  We filled a full size dumpster most of the way with all the junk, and tons of ice plant we removed from the culvert behind the house.  The culvert was 200% filled in with dirt and iceplant, but now it flows! (at least to my neighbors property because his is still clogged).  The dirt behind my house would seep water for weeks after rain.  Now it dries out in a day. 

I spent some time with the laser level to plan out the concrete but the concrete guys (Mission village concrete that my friend Tom runs) did  a great job and ended up tearing out a bunch of dirt and some old concrete. They poured a footing so I can easily expand my kitchen in the future.  It was a ton fun watching it get poured.

 

The concrete is swallowed and water sheds very nicely! The back shed was the next project.  All the junk from the old shed was in my living room for many months, driving me nuts! The new shed is on its own raised concrete platform and is 13'x7'x8' tall.  I love when I get to play with the framing nailer!  So far I have used over 12,000 nails in the nailer, but I have no idea how I managed that.  I will admit that its easy to pop another nail in so I go for it!  I love doing construction stuff! (for a couple days max!)  Our families came to help out and sand the new furniture we got on craigslist.  Jon was a huge help again!  He is one of a handful of people that I can trust to do construction work (framing, roofing, electrical, plumbing, concrete, etc), and have it turn out better than I had envisioned.

 

I missed these pictures on the first round.  Painting with a 2000psi gun gets messy!