Rockin' and Rollin'

While I was in Green Bay, David was busy taping and mudding the drywall.

At first David just loved this job... and then as time went on, he grew to enjoy it even more! Well, by the time I got back he had nearly the whole house done... taped, mudded, and had the texture sprayed on. We are doing a kind of knock down texture, according to what we have read it was an easier texture for beginners and we liked the look. Ya have to kinda use your imagination to see primer and then paint on the wall over that texture.

Never fear, I did not get out of helping.

Upon my return I was given the opportunity to help with the guest bathroom downstairs. I taped a few walls and then helped David with the hopper spraying the texture in the last few rooms.

The next thing was finishing up the access road down the side of the house, the rock retaining walls, and some of the hardscaping outside. THAT is what I was really excited about. Here is a before picture. I had kinda dug out an idea for a walkway and some border of where the driveway needed to go. I would not have put it so near the house but someday we will want a garage over on the west side and the placement of the driveway will allow access to that garage.

I told David since we did not end up with as much room on that west side of the house near the access road, and since for drainage reasons etc it slopes down in that direction, I thought a large rock or a few large rocks on that side would help to balance out the house. He agreed and we found a rock during all this construction and earth moving...

isn't it a beauty!


The thing is... the rock was down the hill... of course.

I had even used the paint program to "draw" a couple of plans... ideas for the front. They are very low tech but you will get the idea. I copied just a picture of that rock, pasted it onto the picture and then did a couple of sketch ups. This plan has a lower type of ornamental fence with plantings. One of the ideas around both of these plans is that I am trying to guide people to the front door and not around the sides of the house. I pasted the rock where I thought it might look good, and made little stick plantings.

Idea #1

Idea #2

This second idea below has a larger gate and even an arbor type thing.. problem is you can barely see the rock and it seems to close in that front section and makes it off balance again.

We decided on Idea #1.

So David and Dickie-Bird (Richard) moved that big rock with the bobcat, we all three placed it and then after David used some landscape timbers to make the front path and side drain areas we filled it in with rocks. First an underlayer of smaller driveway type rocks and then some larger river rocks on top. You can see the two layers below... river rocks to the left and then the underlayer on the right. Those bricks by the way are going into the house for the chimney.

So... there ya go.
Soon the top soil and then plantings...
it is starting to look like idea #1 above....
scroll up and look again and then come on back down.
THAT, by the way, is the real rock... I LOVE IT!
Yipee!


We do have time to relax. Here is David coming home and Delta greeting him.

And we had some company for about a week. Jerry's Uncle Ray, his son Doug and then Doug's two boys. Ray is still a farmer/rancher. He and his wife Katherine raise and sell organic beef and chickens etc. Katherine stayed at home while the guys went on vacation. They enjoyed fishing with Jerry nearly everyday they were here!

It was nice for Jerry too!
One night Jerry pulled out the ice cream maker and we had home made ice cream!

It was so good! They were wonderful company.

At the end of the visit, David asked Ray (who is in his mid 80-s and works all day long on the ranch/farm) if he missed the farm after being gone for a week...

Ray was quiet... thought for a minute or two... smiled and said he missed his wife.

How great is that!?