I kind of left things hanging there, but that’s because we snuck in a little trip north to see family and met up with the college kiddo. We did a whole day at a mid-sized amusement park which involved nearly non-stop coaster rides and funnel cake consumption. After M completed the balcony demo in *just one week – by himself!* we needed a little time away.
Here she is, all cleaned out.
After he got the scaffolding down himself and loaded back into his truck, he returned it and we started packing up for the trip. Once we got back home, we were back at it. Most of the work we’ve done since then is cleanup work. Our neighbor has a light well in the center of his west wall which sits on our property line. If you walk from the front of our house to the rear, the tall brick wall on the left is our neighbor’s house. It can only be accessed from our property. About midway down that wall, the wall steps back, creating this light well. These were used to get more windows and ventilation into homes that were built so close together. There are windows from three rooms on each floor of his home that get some light and fresh air from this little area. But it’s not much to look at outside – we keep fresh mulch in the area, but you can’t really grow much there, and it’s not really our space to mess with.
We did ask him if we could use the space to store our brick pavers during construction, and he agreed. So I’ve started moving pavers from the backyard to this area.
Side note: what we’d really love to do when we redo the brick pavers back here is pave this area with them, and install a bike rack here. It would be really nice to store our bikes (under a cover, and well secured) in this little nook. Eventually we could store them in the garage once that’s done, but this seems pretty convenient too. And if the bike storage was just temporary, I could still maybe put a few planters on the brick with shade loving plants in them. Anyway, I digress.
I know these aren’t very attractive photos, but please realize that this area has been seriously neglected for quite awhile. That white picket fence came with the house, and we hate it and just ignore it. The chain link next door is a mess from their construction, but we’ve just been in a holding pattern for so long back here. As ugly as it is, I’m glad our neighbors haven’t put up nice fences because I really want to have the fence that we want on both sides of our property. (Kind of like the front yard. Happy to finance the general good looks across our three houses.)
After the bricks come up, I have to move the sand as well, down to the compacted gravel base. It’s a TON of sand. I filled the tarp in the backyard, and barely made a dent, so I either need another tarped area, or we need to haul this off another way. Moving materials around a small space is annoying, and hard, sweaty, unsatisfying work. I’ll keep you posted on this progress.
Second side note: We took the iris and daylily bulbs to Iowa on our trip, and they are living their new best lives up there! Now, someone come and move this massive magnolia tree out of the way!
More power tools in our future – concrete foundations need to come out. Super fun. Hopefully we’ll have a mason out here soon – big openings in the brick, lots of tuckpointing in our near future.
