Ted was out at the house on Saturday and took these pictures. He was going to weed-whack a hill that has some tall grass growing on it, but there were Santa Ana winds and it was very hot and dry. It was too dangerous to use even the plastic cord because if you struck a rock, it could spark and start a fire.
The first picture is of the new bluestone front walk with the wall of local rock mostly built beside it. The wall divides the front door from a little area outside our bedroom sliding door. What will go in that area other than a couple of chairs is uncertain right now.
The roofers have been at the house for several days and have still not finished all the roofs.
The gabion structure posts outside the western house wall have been an issue since they were put up. The architect expected the posts to be slender, but the structural engineer said they had to be very large so that they could support the gabions without having any effect on the house, in, for instance, an earthquake. But the posts that were in front of the dining room window were huge and would spoil the effect of light coming through the rocks.
So the structural engineer said we could cut down those two posts and replace them with horizontal bars. There were also some additional bars in the design that had to be added: a bar across the wide gap, a bar across the width where the kitchen window is, and bars across the roof posts for roof supports. They also built a box around the kitchen window, which will allow the kitchen window to have an unimpeded view.
transformation
They started working on the soffit for the range fan for the apartment.
On Monday, they will put the bamboo on the staircase. On Tuesday morning, Nina will meet the wood stove installer who is coming out to see what he needs to bring to install the stove. Sometime soon, the stucco people will return to stucco/paint the wall next to the kitchen door. Ted and I thought we could do it ourselves (someday), but the contractor offered to split the cost because he thinks it looks so awful.
