Front Yard

January 8th, 2010

Yes, I know. This exterior stuff is getting a little dull. But look how terrible that screen door is and the janky mailbox – the SHAME of it.

But it’s not as bad as this:

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

The dreaded google street view.

Ohhh, poor Brick House. Look at your ugliness! A chair? Really? A sofa? A bunch of grapefruit? Ugh.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

Slowly and cheaply we will make you beautiful. Because your resale value…hmmm. Not going to be great in this town.

Still to do:

-Paint! Seriously, paint the house
-Roof fixing
-Flashing fixing
-Landscape
-Driveway gate
-Exterior lighting
-House numbers (first thing I bought! I have them sitting in a drawer patiently waiting)
-Masonry side fence (to prettify the side yard as well)
-Short side fence (knock down that white crap)
-Walkway pavers
–Horizontal slat patio screen
-Hard-scape (with boulders!)
-Front door
-Drip irrigation?

This is going to cost a fortune. Maybe I could just paint the front yard green .

FILED UNDER: before, exterior, landscape

12 Comments »

Patio

January 8th, 2010

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

We are still chugging along on the patio and fire pit and almost hit the halfway point. I know you all are probably tired of seeing this project in process, but it’s consuming our lives right now – so suck it.

We did our first mortar job and discovered that we are not great masons. Oops. It is pretty solid even though our lameness tried to ruin it.

We also installed wood edging to help reign in the rock. We used 4 x 4″ pressure treated wood that was first sealed to resist the great outdoors. What I really want is COR-TEN steel edging like my fake boyfriend Blake Dollahite’s got going on.

The only fabricators I’ve been able to find that would understand what I want is Austin Outdoor Studio. Problem is, 1. They are in Austin and 2. I’m pretty sure they would be crazy cost prohibitive.

Where the hell do you buy cor-ten steel? I gotta learn to weld so that I can suck at that too.

FILED UNDER: before, DIY, exterior, landscape, patio

16 Comments »

Cooking pit

January 7th, 2010

This is the next step in the side yard project and I have a feeling we may get some crap for this. We are making a little fire pit! Don’t mind the weird black strip, it’s not staying. I checked out the city codes and technically this is a “cooking” pit. And yes, I do need an outdoor “cooking” pit – don’t mind the BBQ over there.

I did my research rounds around the interweb (cause I’m lazy and the library is only open like two days a week now) about DIY’ing a fire pit or cinder block cooking pit. We just started finalizing the plans for our little gravel patio and are currently at the laying it out and trouble shooting stage.

Cinder block is not a great fire pit choice. It can crack and degrade over time and some say even EXPLODE (well, under extreme heat and moisture). Upside? It’s cheap, temporary, industrially modern and goes well with the architecture of the house. It’s also small enough to meet code.

I’m nothing if not a risk taker.

We dug down about 6 inches to inset the base and still need to dig a center hole and fill the bottom with gravel for drainage and air flow. Another three inches of gravel are going down around the exterior to level out the rest of the patio. The blocks still have to get mortared and leveled out as well as possibly have interior firebricks installed.

After it all cures completely in a couple weeks we could have a small quaint fire. For cooking of course.

FILED UNDER: DIY, exterior, fireplace, landscape, patio

9 Comments »