Fences

We recently had a property survey in preparation for the first big project of the summer. We're finally putting up a fence.

 This way Elli can run free, we can grow berries up the fence and we'll get a bit (more) privacy.

 We decided against metal in favor of wood posts with deer fencing. It fits the surroundings and almost disappears into the hillside.

Part of the fence project includes hanging out our driveway gate from funky chainlink to a nicer wood/metal gate. We're moving the gate closer to the street to give us more room in the front.

We found a local shop that welds frames for super reasonable prices and to save $$, we'll be installing and finishing the gate ourselves.

This (now funky) area will be enclosed:

 C's already started the hardest part and spent 3 days digging a massive 4 ft. hole, by hand.

ps- today is our 3 year anniversary as homeowners!

The area in front of our house is huge and difficult to maintain. The hill slopes and we've struggled with what to plant there. We'd like something that requires almost no maintenance. More importantly we don't want to plant anything that needs much watering as we have two, giant oak trees in the front. Other than rain, we were told they shouldn't be watered at all in order to prevent fungus and disease.This weekend C cleaned off the slope, got rid of a massive tree stump and we cast around fistfuls of wildflower and poppy seeds. We hope to have our own field of wildflowers in front of the house.
And from a few weeks back, some new plantings in front of the new porch:
Madagascar Jasmine we received as a wedding present:
Pride of Madeira, C's holiday gift from my brother:
Two Lilac vines:
Elli watched it all from her favorite look-out spot on the front porch.
C finally had a chance to pull out the chainsaw and get it cleaned up. The Oakland zoo recently got into some trouble for cutting down acacias to feed the elephants. Apparently they didn't have the right to chop down the trees and now the elephants no longer have their favorite snack. We plan on donating our felled acacias to the elephants. We have more wild acacias than we can handle. They grow everywhere at an alarmingly fast rate.

hm, weeks later and the promised post has failed to materialize. it's been a busy summer.

about that promised surprise under our new front porch....here's a hint (look close):
in the meantime, we ripped up the rotten boards, knocked down a wall, cleaned out the dirt and put in a foundation.under the porch we now have a 300 gallon food-grade container that formally held kosher cooking oil. we hooked it up to our gutters and the new drains on the front porch and will use the collected water to keep our front yard nice and lush. FYI, in a recent summer rainstorm (before we had our gutters hooked up to the tank) we collected 5 gallons of water in about 10 minutes. we're thinking we need a few more of those containers for the backyard...

since then we've finished the front porch (still need to seal the wood, but that's next weekend's project), installed gutters and given one coat of fresh paint to the front of the house. i've also rekindled a dormant distaste for prep work. oh, and C built platform on the top of our hill.

this summer is almost over and i can hardly remember when it began. i've been lazy with posting, mainly because it's been kind of busy around these parts. i'll try to post some more photos this week. we're pretty darn excited about all of the work...

remember way back when we bought all of that redwood off of craigslist?

we deemed august the month for using up that wood and we (well C, at least) have certainly lived up to that promise.

we knew that we would be using a good portion of the wood to rebuild our rotten front porch. what we didn't expect was that we would not be doing the work ourselves. after ripping up the all of the wood porch, we took one look at the non-existent foundation and the one rotten loose 4x4 that was holding up THE ENTIRE house and knew that we needed some professional help.

first a few pictures of the porch before: we interviewed a few people and picked the one who seemed least frightened by our floating house and most willing to put up with our constant questions. now we have a beautiful concrete seismically-sound foundation and a water-proof basement.

to save ourselves some money, we opted to finish off all of the non-structural work ourselves. at this point, the porch is still unfinished and waiting for the redwood decking and railing.

we saved the siding (it was all redwood!) when the guys tore down the wall and asked them to reuse as much as possible when they rebuilt the front. we just spent 3 days patching old holes and cracks, caulking gaps and sanding the surfaces so when we repaint the house it won't look so frankensteinian.

i won't bore you guys with gobs of construction photos (just a few dozen), but i do think it's pretty darn exciting...

also, there's one very cool secret hidden under the new porch that i'll share with you later this week.

a while back we dubbed this style of wall block as "too home depot" and decided we'd never use them. and then i found a pallet of them for super cheap. amazing how quickly a good deal can change your mind...my mother would be so proud.

before

after

taking out that tree a few weeks back really changed our front yard; not that we really need another area to attack with a project....in some ways i feel overwhelmed with all of the possibilities, but on the other hand i feel so lucky. sometimes we look at a tiny area in our backyard and think about how just that tiny corner is twice the size of so many people's entire yards. our front yard adds another entire dimension to that feeling... one of the things we've noticed about working in the front yard as opposed to the backyard is how it suddenly connects you to the neighborhood. it feels good to see our neighbors out walking their dogs, puttering outside and taking off for church (as we heathens play around in the dirt). we also spotted a turkey on the loose....there's a great little article in this month's sunset magazine about a family down in LA that "...started with their garden and transformed an inner-city neighborhood into an oasis". i'm ridiculously inspired by this sentiment regarding the money and time the family spent on their home: "...It was [also] a statement --an act of faith that the area was worth the investment." following a really rough week for our city, i needed to read something like that...it makes me feel like i'm not wrong for generally believing in the good of people and the ability to take some control of your future.

so that's what was running through my head as we dug and carried and leveled and finally planted our little front area. i don't even have photos of the true before. this area was completely overgrown with huge dark bushes that looked dangerous and scary. we ripped those out when we bought the place and the area had been sitting untouched since then.

C was a madman with cleaning and digging out the area and managed to build the wall and level it in pretty much 2 weekends. i carried the stones from our backyard to the front (and have the baby biceps to prove it) but he's the true muscle on this project. we went a little nuts at the nursery yesterday and bought pint-sized drought-friendly plants. we're keeping our fingers crossed that they'll all grow up to be big and strong and cover up our "home depot" wall.

before

after

oh, and there's a really great view of san francisco when you sit on the edge of the wall! we figure it will be where we'll sit and watch the neighbors (and the wild turkeys!) go by when we're old and grey...

photos are back!
that professional job i mentioned a while back? here it is....
another lovely acacia tree growing at a bad bad angle. during these last few windstorms we'd lay in bed praying that it would last a few more days without toppling over in to the street...


we have a front yard, finally...and yards and yards of gorgeous acacia mulch.