Greenwood Heights Backyard
June 5, 2009
Quickie Garden Update
While we are still working out the final planting plan with Diana at Fun City Design (mostly since Mrs. Tikihouse and I are still rethinking where certain "foundation" plantings should go). Diana has come up with some great ideas in her first draft of the planting plan (coming soon).
In the meantime, here's a down and dirty post of the growth of the garden as-is so far this spring.
Photo: Azaleas from late May. Still missing those pretty blooms!
May 5, 2009
Veggie Garden Time!
Next step on our phase 2 backyard reno was to bring our tropicals outside for the spring/summer/fall and then get ready to plant our big veggie garden.
Prior to that we had a good discussion with our designer Diana, at Fun City Design, about meeting up to discuss the final planting plan and the reality of what we'd be able to do under the current economic squeeze. Also, we wanted her to see the space and how it had evolved since last fall. Our meeting will be in a later post.
So all the tropicals made it out, either in the "seating area" or out by the shed (for now). Adding more greenery made a huge difference in softening the space.
Before we could move forward with planting the veggie garden, we turned the soil once more (fourth time now?) and began to layout markers to dig for our garden blue stone path.
Diana's plan had the garden broken up into four quadrants, with a bird bath in the center.
Proposed original plan, Fall 2008
In order to maximize our planting area, we opted to try out three long rows, with stepping stones in between the rows. This would align our plantings north/south and allow us to experiment as to how much we can cram in (or not) into the garden to max out our output, i.e. live off our garden this summer!
April 13, 2009
Paper, Dirt, Buckets...and Bamboo!
As a recap form the last post, after much clean up, we received a call from our "generous neighbors" that we would be able to have some young specimens from their grove (they were thinning it out) of the bamboo genus Phyllostachys. We were THRILLED.
The only catch is the delivery date was TBD and we needed a ton of topsoil to prep the bamboo planter box.
A quick call to J&L Landscaping (and then a "help" call to several friends) and we were scheduled for a delivery of their best top soil.
Larry at J&L had figured we would need approximately 3 1/2 yrds. of soil to fill the box, with a tad left over to spread around. At $65/yrd. (with delivery) we figured it was a good deal. In prep for the delivery, and bucket brigade through the house, we cleared away furniture and plants and laid down contractor paper (no need to scratch up the oak floors).
Photo: one HUGE pile of topsoil (tarped, of course)
Delivery was made bright and early and to our surprise, more like 4 1/2 to 5 yrds. were dumped! (though we only paid for the 3 1/2 yrds)
March 31, 2009
Spring Has Sprung, But Something Sunk
Spring greetings from Mr. and Mrs. Tikihouse. After a VERY LONG and cold winter, we were most happy to see the temps begin to rise and the ground soften.
Since our last post a short "knee wall" was installed and a less than ideal green hurricane fence was placed between the new brick condo building's yard and ours. Could have been worse...it could have been white vinyl! NOTE: we will be covering it up as one of the first tasks in phase II of our backyard reno project.
While it is a tad early to begin any planting, our plan was to begin moving plants again and turn over the right hand side of the garden, adding humous and peat moss as we went.
Photo: overview of the start of phase 2 of our back yard reno
That's when we had a sinking feeling, or rather saw the sinking.
November 25, 2008
The Final Day Arrives, Phase One Complete!
As the dawn of the last day rose, we were not sure that the crew would be able to finish up with only a half day's worth of "work time" left, but they had surprised us before.
On the hit list: finish up the pavers, bring in the remaining pea gravel, brush in "lock sand" into the pavers and wet it all down so, as Gaspar was fond of saying, "it'll look NICE." (overlay words with a great Canarsie accent)
The remaining pavers went down quickly with most of the more intricate "piece work" taking the bulk of the time, with the crew custom cutting shapes and slices to fit in any remaining gaps in the pattern.
Photo: Making quick work of the paver "piece work."
Photo: Final paver pattern.
Continue reading "The Final Day Arrives, Phase One Complete!"
November 11, 2008
Stone and gravel galore: days five and six.
When last we left off, the patio was poured and faced with cultured stone. We had added back into the mix the 15 foot planter box for the bamboo...the rest of the work would be to finish the install of the remaining cultured stone, add blue stone caps to the box, stairs and patio edge, layout the pathway and seating area, then bring in our reused (and some new) bluestone for stepping stones, layout the pavers on the patio...add in a final layer of pea gravel, then the crew at Your Way Contracting would be done! Here's how the two days went.
The main work yet to be done was the final grading of the yard and the layout of the 11X11 foot seating area and paths.
Photo: Bird's eye view of the work site.
Continue reading "Stone and gravel galore: days five and six."
October 27, 2008
Mr. and Mrs. Tikihouse get stoned!
As we intimated in our last post, the original "downsizing" of our hardscaping project and been "upsized" again with generous donations from our family.
So, we were able to add back in the bamboo raised planter and had to make the "hard" decision (pun intended) on what to face the new planter, steps and ledge of the new patio area.
Diagram: adding back in the planter, now 15X3 feet.
Our original spec for the raised planters was for a matching "granite city blend" stackable wall product from Nicolock to a match our pavers. At $13/sq. ft for materials only, that match was out. In addition, we had time to take a look at the space as it was evolving. Since we would be adding bluestone to the seating area below the patio and white/tan pea gravel, it occurred that we might want to further accentuate the seating area with another similar look.
In addition, we decided to nix the second planter box, partially due to price and partially due to the need to soften up the seating area with a planting bed, not box, for clumping bamboo, grasses, etc.
The options for facing the planter box, stairs and the 24 inch high ledge from the patio down to the seating area (which never occurred to us) were outlined by Gaspar of Your Way Contracting. Typically folks face these types of areas with pavers (as Gapar said "looks like sh•t," from the sample photos it did!), stucco (which would be ok, but not necessarily match the look and have maintenance issues down he road) or cultured stone (a product made from stone dust, porcelain and cement that is cast into natural looking stone shapes). Of course there was also brick, but we already had four floors of that!
October 15, 2008
Fixing, Framing and Pouring...patio is up next!
After two mega days of demolition on the old concrete slab, we were back to dirt and some surprises.
Pleasant surprise was that our home had little to no damage over the years under the concrete pad, probably mostly due to the back porch overhang, according to Gaspar at Your Way Contracting. Our neighbor's two-story frame house did not come out of it as well, but not too worse for wear.
We had alerted our neighbor (funny anecdote, he actually helped hand-mix the mega-slab we just removed back in 1965 as a teenager) that we would be doing the work several weeks before hand so he could have his contractor at the ready if anything turned up. Since he was prepped, we called Jim Irwin Contracting from L.I. and had the crew come over to check out the home's extension footing and beams.
Photo: The fixing of our neighbor's dry rot.
Some dry rot had permeated the sheathing and studs, but the footer and main beams were in good shape. Jim's crew made quick work of removing some of the recently redone vinyl siding (nicely done to match ours by our good neighbor), repairing the damage, adding waterproof sheathing and burring metal flashing over the affected area down 18 inches below grade. We'd do our fare share by back pouring a curb along the new work to seal it in.
In addition, we were also happy that morning to have the delivery of our "granite city blend" pavers from Nicoloc (actually they were so nice to look at, unfortunately someone "helped themselves" to 20 some odd pavers during their storage...not a huge hit, but an unhappy Mr. and Mrs. Tikihouse!).
Onto the next day and Your Way's patio form framing and pour of the new 18X20 foot patio.
Continue reading "Fixing, Framing and Pouring...patio is up next!"
October 6, 2008
Crack that pad! The back yard demo begins.
After finally wrapping up our agreement with our friendly neighborhood developer, we were all set to begin the demo of the back yard.
This consisted of:
1. demolition of the back 20X26 ft. concrete patio (yes, that's a hellava lot of concrete!)
2. demo of the "rat slab" (walkways or slabs poured less than 3 inches thick) in our walkway to the shed.
3. cartage of what turned out to be 2 yards of debris (we filled the container)
4. regrading of dirt for new patio, seating area, paths and yard.
Photo: Patio demo during day one.
(more photos in the gallery at the end of the post)
With all of that done, we could then move onto the actual hardscape construction.
As Gaspar at Your Way Contracting had said, "we're gonna hit you hard" from day 1. He showed up with his crew of five workers, most of whom have been with him for many years, and began the demo in earnest. They showed up at 8:00am and worked a full days till 5:00pm, with only short lunch breaks. Certainly harder than some of the work we have seen in the new building!
Photo: Both hand demo and the good-ol-jack hammer.
(more photos in the gallery at the end of the post)
Continue reading "Crack that pad! The back yard demo begins."
September 29, 2008
Still waiting on our man, might as well get moving.
While we waited to get our agreement signed, sealed and delivered from our friendly neighborhood developer, we scheduled the start date with Your Way Contracting, confirmed the revised design with Fun City Design and started our own part of the job: moving 50+ container plants, outdoor furniture, pulling plants and prepping the garden for day one's demo.
Diagram: where stuff has to go.
Whew! It was much harder than we expected, but sweat equity pays off in the end, right?
(even more to follow in the spring)
Essentially we had to move any and all plants, rocks, materials, etc. that would get in the way of the demo, regrading for the paths or the remaking of our new patio/seating area/pathways.
Continue reading "Still waiting on our man, might as well get moving."