Emer's Porch Phase 1 - 8/22

This is the view of my side porch. Yeah, there's no before picture, BUT. I can tell you that the white lattice screen in front of the garbage barrels (hiding them) is new. The wood chips under the barrels is new/recycled from the back yard. When we had a chance to get the stump of an oak tree ground down we saved the chips to landscape with. The white lattice under the porch is new. We replaced the unfinished pressure treated, old lattice that was there. The stairs were unstained for years and were gray, gray, gray. After some scrubbing and washing they were ready for staining. I On the right you can see that I stained all but the treads of the stairs. I may just go back and stain the strip of wood that is showing between the porch and the new lattice.

How the Jungle was won. aka the yard

Yard picture number 1

This view is from the deck off the back of my house, and to the right. This deck is about 7 feet off the ground. That ramp of gravel was not there before. The bulldozer in the pic is bringing in the 2x3 concrete "legos" they are using to build the walls.

Yard picture 2

...panning to the left a little....

This view is almost entirely of my next door neighbor and how their yard is being transformed. The property line is about where the grass and gravel /ramp meet. They are bringing UP thier yard to be "soccer field flat" as we call it. When I pan to the left a little more you will begin to appreciate how much fecking dirt was brought into our yards.

Before either of us started, the last 30-40 feet of our yards dropped off 10-12 feet.

Yard pic 3

This is a shot of the back right hand corner of my yard. These "legos" are 2 feet high. For us 2 1/2 blocks were laid down for our wall and our wall is fully laid and finsihed. An additional 4 1/2 were laid down for the neighbor's wall. So their wall will come up 13-14 feet from bottom grade at the back. You can see the last course being laid from right to left.

A lot of feckin' dirt..........

Yard pic 4

This is a shot, still from the deck looking into the middle of the back yard.

To get an idea of JUST HOW MUCH was cleared out of this area, look at the woods behind the wall. Same thing. We had 6 two foot diameter trees, one four foot wide oak and tons of underbrush that came out of this space. We used to NOT be able to see anything right behind us...now we can.

Yard pic 5

Far left corner. The width of our property is 75 feet.

Yard pic 6

For this shot I walked down to the lower deck and stood between the pool on my right and the lower deck on my left. Unfortunately the slope down is behind the railing, but you get an idea of the nosebleed factor here............