Still more to do.

Carlos (standing) and Jamie are hard at work laying the pavers and brick.  Every day I make them a nice big lunch and all day try to keep them hydrated with ice cold drinks and water.  We're so very pleased with their work and I think they know it.  They're good men and we're blessed to have found them via our neighbor. 

They started working early this morning.  Jamie arrived first and he and Michael ran to Home Depot to pick up mortar and a few more pavers.  Then when they got back, we drove to get another yard of fine grain sand. 

Then Michael and I made a couple of trips back and forth to Vacaville, getting the bricks, of which you see some of them stacked in the background.  Two pallets is what we ended up with to do the enclosed porch and the walkway, 1035 authentic used bricks total.  The guy at The Brickyard gave us a discount which was unexpected and very nice.  We all helped unload the bricks into the wheelbarrows and stack them in the yard.  Basically, I sat in the truck and unloaded the bricks off the pallet for the guys so it would be easier for them to reach the bricks and it ended up being much faster.  Less work.  I stacked neat little rows on the tailgate and they just grabbed them up and stacked in the wheelbarrows.  It went nice and smooth that way. 

We can't wait to see it all finished.  Especially Michael.  He doesn't like messes and I can tell this is making him nervous.  Having the yard all messy.   We have a lot of stuff.  Stuff like statues, stuff like yard art and knickknacks.  All cluttered and driving him insane.  I'm okay with it because I have a vision for it.  And patience.  Which is something that Mike doesn't have.  Patience.  ;-) 

The yard is coming along.

Our neighbor has a landscaping business and over the past couple of days he's been giving us advise and he let us hire a couple of his workers (hard workers!) to help with some of the labor in our yard remodel.  Digging lots of trenches for drainage pipes, moving three yards of 3/4 inch road base rock from the driveway to the backyard, taking out flagstone pavers, removing some sand that was underneath those and spread out some of the road base.  Digging, digging and more digging.  Digging of roots, digging of dirt and digging of sand.

I kept them hydrated with ice water and Gatorade.  Made a nice lunch for them and later on this afternoon, around 2 pm, I surprised them with some strawberry shortcake.  That was fun!  

More work.

Over the weekend, Michael and Greg, jackhammered the concrete.

The boys enjoying the lunch I made.  These are two of the hardest working men I know!
While they did that...

I did this:

I'm redoing the little shaded section of the yard.  I have a walkway that needs to be taken up and relaid.  I have a plan for that. 

 I love my little Mexican Daisies. 

Here is what I worked on over the weekend.  Pulling up the old Rabbits Foot Fern.  Don't ever take a potted Rabbits Foot Fern and plant in the ground.  Big mistake.  It completely took over and choked out my other plants. 

See the little chair?  I have a plan for that area, too. 

There they are, some of the fuzzy footed rhizomes that took over my garden.  A big mess.

DIY Backyard Patio Remodel

Work is never done.  What we're working on now is something I've been wanting to do for years, ever since we took out the lawn and put in my new landscaping design with the path.  One day, I drew up a plan on graph paper and showed it to Mike.  The next thing I know, he was making it happen.  He ripped out the grass, moved the fountain to the center of the yard and removed the brick on the concrete patio and he relocated it out in the yard to my design of a path meandering around the fountain and going to different sections in the yard.  Then we painted the concrete patio where the brick used to be. 

Now, we're taking out the old concrete patio and replacing it with some pretty cobblestone looking pavers from Home Depot made by Basalite.  One of Mike's customer's works for Basalite and is getting us a deal on these.   The color we picked is a darkish grey, not shown here.

4 in. Square 4 Cobble Positano

Originally, we were thinking of putting in a composite decking material and then priced that verses redwood.  We also thought of just leaving the concrete and taking out the planter that ran alongside the house, filling it in with new concrete and just painting the whole concrete patio with patio paint like we did before in the light grey.  The real problem being that when it rains, the water pools up alongside the house because it slopes downward and there are lots of uneven spots and cracks in the concrete.  The cracks weren't really a big issue because they could have been repaired.  All in all, it was the sloping and pooling that decided it.  Removing this concrete is going to be a big job for the boys as it's about four inches thick.  Not sure if it has rebar or not. 

The corner showing where the planter alongside the house has been removed.

The water lines and hose hook up are being relocated today.  Happy those things will be out of the way.  After this is all completed, I'm going to get the phone company out here to clean up all the unsightly phone lines.  The phone company have made a mess of things over the years and the guy keeps telling me that one day they'll clean it up.  Little do they know that day is soon arriving.

We want to have another little garden party this summer.  This time, if our schedule allows,  we'll make it a wine tasting event. 

I have one more section of the backyard that needs some new ideas.  It's my old stone path that leads around to a dry creek bed which has a little bridge Mike built to go over the rock bed.  We have a liquid amber tree that has roots that are invading my path and lifting up the stones and causing raised sections that are a tripping hazard.  So, I'm thinking of taking them all up, putting in a path of some 3/4 inch river stones and setting the large stepping stones centered along the path.  Then taking the leftover ones and putting in a small patio under the arbor which is at the end of the path.  I'll have to get some pictures to show you.  Will post next time.

Dinking

We went away to Cobb Mountain with some friends for the weekend.  Another little getaway.  The weather was gorgeous.  We ate lunch on the porch.  We did a little yard work.  We ate home cooked beans that Sharyn made in the crock pot.  We ate pie and watched movies and read magazines and talked and joked.  We drove to the dumps to get some organic bark chips.  We went out for breakfast.  We stopped at a winery for some wine tasting.  Got some gorgeous pictures of the surrounding landscape.  Basically, we dinked. 

Our definition of dink:  To drive around with no real purpose or destination; wherever the road takes you. 

We dink a lot!  By ourselves and with our friends.  Sometimes we get lost.  We love to get lost because you never know what you'll find.  Back roads, side roads, high roads and low roads.  Just look at the lovely field of lupine we found by dinking. 

Lupine.

When we got home, first thing we did after unpacking was to drive to the lumber yard to get some bricks for edging the pathway in our backyard. 

We didn't waste any time in getting this job started.  We've been talking about it for the past couple of weeks and are so happy we decided to do it.  Now the bark will hopefully stay in the beds and not get in the path so much.

Have a couple areas left to finish.

Once this job is completed, we have a few other changes in the yard to work on.   One is the back porch and the other is the concrete slab patio.  We want to put in a new patio material, leaning towards putting in a composite deck.  For the enclosed back porch, I want to remove the slate and put in brick to match the path because the path leads right to the back porch and the slate just doesn't make sense.  It's not cohesive. 

Last day of Mendocino

Till next time we visit...