Interior Walls: Painting
1. Once the trim was masked and drop cloths laid, it was time to get rolling with the paint. Since there were only two walls…
Author: stega
Teeny Tiny Repairs Due to Small Invaders.
One of the non-fun things we dealt with this past winter (most likely as a result of the driveway work) was a rat–not a huge…
Interior Walls: Prep Work
In addition to the big exterior projects, we’ve managed to complete some interesting interior work. In January I set about painting the boys’ space in…
Our own little Pit of Sarlacc
When the house was first built, the doc used his giant tractor to cut earth from the bottom of the south pasture and move it…
The Tale of the Driveway Repaving, Part 3 of 3
In mid-February we were able to start putting down asphalt finally. The crew started in the courtyard and had it done quite quickly. By noon that…
When you live with two feathered dinosaurs
Stuff like this happens…regularly. SaveSave SaveSaveSaveSave
The Tale of the Driveway Repaving, Part 2 of 3
So there we were, without water and with a dirt driveway. The crew returned with an excavator the next day and got busy. They dug…
The Tale of the Driveway Repaving, Part 1 of 3
After the Great Wall was completed, we turned our attention to the driveway. Having multiple large trucks running down it had pretty much trashed it.…
Contest Closing
We extended our first-ever contest to allow a few more entries, and now it’s time to close it and determine the winner, so this is…
The Wall Saga: Addendum
After spending over two months detailing all the work that was put in to rebuilding our large retaining wall, a few remaining items are worth…
The Wall Saga: Finishing Touches
On November 17, 2015, the finishing touches were put on the replacement retaining wall. This included moving earth to the top of the wall to…
The Wall Saga: Putting it Together
A few posts back I mentioned that once Agent Smith’s father–our excavator operator and general project manager–flew back home, there was an unforeseen hiccup with…
The Wall Saga: Drainage
One seemingly small but necessary step to completing the wall rebuild was creating proper drainage. We doubt this was done when the old wall was…
How do you solve a problem like manure?
The neighbors on the other side of our eastern fenceline rent out most of their eleven or so acres they own to a guy who has…
Two-Year Update
A day before we closed escrow on Purgatory, we drafted this list of all the things we needed to get done. Here it is updated:…
The Wall Saga: Block Unloading
We ended up purchasing 96 concrete blocks, only some of which are shown in these images. Since the 18-wheelers could only bring a dozen or so at…
Time Extended!
It seems stickers were not enough of an enticement; we’ve had just a smattering of entries for our first-ever contest. So we’re upping the stakes…
The Wall Saga: Left Turn to Albuquerque
This is why I was extremely happy when I got both Apple and Google Maps to update their data for our property. As mentioned a…
The Wall Saga: Footer In Place
Once the concrete was poured, we needed to allow it to cure. We continued to unload shipments of block and I took a moment to walk…
The Wall Saga: Concrete Pumping Video
Carrying on from the last post, here is the video, with lots of annotations/subtitles to show and explain what was done.
The Wall Saga: Pumping Day
Once the forms were in place, it was time to pump in the concrete. Not an easy task; because of the hills and road conditions,…
The First Purgatory Contest
While we haven’t posted the full story yet, today was a banner day. We finished the pool resurfacing project, and to celebrate, we’re going to…
The Wall Saga: Form Work
With block deliveries trickling in–after the unloading fiasco in last week’s post, we ended up getting just one truck a day, if that, as most…
The Wall Saga: Unexpected Moment
Here’s a video of some of the unloading mentioned in the last Wall Saga post. It gives an idea of how messy things got that…
Flowers at Purgatory
Some plant is always blooming at Purgatory. This is one of the best features about the place, and while we are preparing to rejuvenate much…
The Wall Saga: 18-Wheelers and Inclines
To rebuild the wall we ended up purchasing large 6’x6’x2′ blocks from Granite Rock. They, along with United Rentals and All American Rentals, lessened some…
The Wall Saga: Deliveries!
In addition to an excavator (actually four excavators–the first one we rented from United was brand new but died and had to be sent back to the…
The Wall Saga: Trench Warfare
While the warfare was really only against the pocket gophers that are endemic up here, we did manage to win quite a few battles. Before you…
Aerial Excavation Video
Agent Smith shot this video toward the end of the wall project. It shows the magnitude of work involved in prepping to lay in the…
The Wall Saga: The Trench
Once our driver started working, a couple of days later we had an open trench. At this time the flagpole was pulled and moved to…
The Wall Saga: Cutting Progress
As part of the wall project we had to do some preliminary cutting work. In addition to the palm trees mentioned in an earlier post,…
Random Drone Footage
While cleaning out a folder of saved items that I meant to post here eventually, I found this little video Agent Smith shot with a…