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Health & Fitness

Backyard Remodel: The Chronicles Continue

A backyard remodeling project gets started. Will it finish?

The backyard remodel/landscaping project is in the planning stage. While all seems in limbo at the moment, much has happened, and I expect a frenzy of activity to slam into us in a few weeks. We’ve got a designer, a couple of contractors, a vision and a plan. A paint scheme, a backyard layout, ideas for gates, paving, plants, watering, drainage, shade, lighting. I even have a plan on how to pay for this venture. (Hint: it will take raising our personal debt ceiling and delving into some accounts I didn’t expect to crack open for a few years. Live for today, right? Damn straight. Gulp.)

How and why did we pick a designer? After all, it’s only a small backyard in Belmont Shore. Well, recently we had our kitchen remodeled, and were extremely happy with the work Diane, our designer, did on that project. She had been recommended by a neighbor, and we’d seen her work, so we hired her for the kitchen job, and it turned out great. So we consulted her about our backyard ideas and she was more than enthusiastic, and wanted us to meet Jeff, a landscape contractor she started using recently; hence a new partnership was born. As for “Why use a designer?” while I feel I can come up with a decent plan myself, I didn’t want to get bogged down in the details such as the selection and coordination of contractors, materials, paints, and a hundred other things I would probably not even think of.

A recent chronology:

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Tuesday, 8/9/11 - Ivan our kitchen contractor looked at the front door damage. We were thinking it was termites; his thoughts: water damage. So a roofer is in order to come to check it out. I’m seeing dollar signs. (I took some pictures). The paint guy put up some test colors on the trim and outside stucco. Trim color looks pretty good – a little lighter blue than we thought, but we’ll see. He brought the wrong color for the stucco though. Need to get the proper color and do over. Also told Diane we’d like to see a test swatch of the color of a house a couple blocks down.

Wednesday, 8/10/11 - We need a couple of windows replaced along with the front door. More water damage. Ivan says the crummy windows could be the source of leakage inside the walls of the back ‘turret’ area. Needs to be checked out. Could be a big tear down job. OMG.

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Thursday, 8/11/11 - Watching the news, it’s almost all grim: 30 soldiers dead in a copter crash; starving kids in Somalia; riots in London; shootings of protestors in Syria; the miserable U.S. economy; clueless Democrats, spiteful Republicans, a timid President. Kim and I look at each other and can’t believe how fortunate we are. We’re complaining about the cost of fixing a wall in our house? How lame is that? Let’s get real: keep things in perspective kids, we were lucky to be born American.

Saturday, 8/13/11 - Planned meeting in Corona Del Mar to visit a house currently having backyard remodel done, with a lot of the work being done by Jeff. Rode my bike down there, met Kim. Diane and Jeff were there too. I got there early, had coffee at the Coffee Bean and Tealeaf on PCH. Kim was early too, and got a walk in down Golden Rod to the bluffs over the beach. I then packed up my bike in her Jetta and we drove over to the house on Sandune Lane. Beautiful place. Belongs to a major league baseball player and his family. Looks like Jeff does excellent work, and we got a feel for what some of the details of our work would look like. Nice. Fire pit, paving/concrete work, fence/wall, plants/landscaping; all looked good. I had forgotten how nice Corona Del Mar is. Perhaps I’ll try out for the majors next season.

To be continued...

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