long time at Home Depot

Another huge challenge we are facing is what to do with the backyard. I didn't feel at all intimidated to take on the entire house, but the backyard has us going in circles. There are so many issues - the yard slopes up from left to right and from front to back. There are large ficus trees with roots near the surface, so any grading cannot go below the root level or we loose the trees. Water pools near both the house and garage. There are local ordinances about handling runoff that need to be figured out. On top of all this, our long term plan is to relocate the garage, so we don't want to spend a lot on anything we do but we do want it to be nice and user friendly in the meantime. Whew, everytime we try to figure it out we get stuck. I went to Home Depot today to look at the stone/masonry books to try to figure out if we could make this a DIY project. I spent about two hours looking at books, and left even more confused. This may be a good sign though - I finally know enough to know what I don't know. For anyone looking to do a DIY project, Home Depot publishes a series of excellent hardcover books covering all sorts of topics. They have loads of pictures, step by step instructions, materials lists, tool lists, etc.

The contractor was here beginning to patch the stucco around the windows that was chipped out during the window replacement. This is an exciting step because once the patching is done, we can work on getting it painted. This will significantly reduce the junkyard look!

Here is the stucco being mixed:

Here is a window partially patched:


Each window was surrounded by this metal lath so the stucco would stick to it.

Here is a blob of stucco sticking to the metal lath: