Front Yard part three

Ahhh! Finally it's time to relax. I'm done with work for a week and we have a massive Thanksgiving Feast to look forward to. It won't be the same this year, partly because my parents are marooned in the sun-starved UK and partly because we've run out of skylights to install. But at least I've found a few minutes to sit down and write me blog!

This post is actually another compilation of progress we've made recently on our front yard. We've been chipping away over the last few weekends, whenever time would allow. Last time around we had just about finished the third planter bed and the upper section of the stairs. 

The photo below dates from the beginning of October when we started on the lower section of the stairs. We decided to work upwards from the bottom of the hill this time, since each step partially stands on the step below. We used string lines to set the alignment, and I used my new laser level (more on this later) to figure the difference in height between the upper stairs and the lowest step. From this information we can calculate our tread depth and rise - the first section of the treads have a ten inch depth.

This is later on, after the first four steps have been constructed and Amy Sheep is getting to work excavating for the first platform:

Excavation completed:

This is quite a while later, after the first platform was finished off and the next three steps have been built.

Later still and the second platform has been constructed.

There is still more work to do on the steps, but at this stage we switched over to building the retaining wall which will go about six feet in front of the lowest raised bed. The first step was to scratch a channel in the dirt in approximately the correct location - the object was just to remove the topsoil so that the wall can stand directly on the solid layer below.

The trench was filled with several inches of road base and then the lowest section of the wall was levelled and installed with the usual ½ inch diameter rebar stakes.

The wall is constructed from 6" x 6" PT lumber which weighs an absolute ton. Really. The bags of road base are pretty heavy too, but Amy Sheep can pick them up with one hand.

The first bit of the wall:

All the cut ends were treated with wood preserver:

Around this time, we managed to drag Quinster and Samuel Sheep away from the comfort of indoors, and we had them fill in the low spots in the steps and install the weed cloth with the staple gun:

This was how the yard looked at packin' up time on this particular day:

One bright sunny morning after a maple syrup-based breakfast Sam and I snuck out and added another layer on the wall. We did plan on doing more later in the day, but we got sidetracked. Sam applied the wood preserver this time, while I hammered in the rebar.

The green color fades to a much more pleasant brown after a couple of days.

The king of the castle!

In between all this activity, we received some starling new information. Red wood lumber has been out-of-stock all over the Bay Area for months due to you-know-what, and, while the shelves at our favored home center remain bare, we became aware of an alternative source. It meant an extra thirty minutes on the freeway (x2), but it was a trip Amy and Quinn Sheep we happy to make one day while I was at work (so I was told). Thus, finally, we were able to complete the third raised bed:

We also filled in the gaps at the base of the third raised bed and connected it to the mid-level bed. This will retain the path that we will make between the beds.

By this time, winter was upon us. Basically, this means highs of 21 C/70 F in the middle of the day, and sometimes we have to put the central heating on in the evening. And it's dark by 5:30 pm. It's actually perfect weather for working outside. This is exactly what I told Amy Sheep when I suggested we do a bit more work on our retaining wall. It must have been convincing because we spent a very pleasant morning maneuvering heavy lumber and pounding rebar.

I do not have a great strike rate with my 12 lb sledgehammer; at this point in the project contact between rebar and the shaft has led to what is best described as a notch. When I was a teenager, I broke the shaft on my Dad's old sledge hammer. That was when we found out that no one sells replacement hammer shafts....you just have to buy another hammer.

Getting the far side of the wall set required a certain amount of excavating, so it was a good thing that Amy Sheep was on hand and on the spade.

This bit is after the stakes have been driven in:

This was as far as we got before we ran out of 6" x 6" lumber:

To be continued....