Joseph and Christine’s

Amazing Technicolor

Dream Yard

PART THREE OF THREE

This is a close-up of the area in front of the gazebo. Our soil is very hard clay that drains poorly, and the many structures I put in the yard increased the drainage problems. Rather than try to plant stuff in dirt not much different than concrete, we elected to put in a lot of decorative rock (eight-and-a-half tons of rock, as it turned out!) and then use various pots for our plants. But we did not want to just put in a bunch of the same clay pots. We varied it as much as we could.

I’m standing on the gazebo looking across the yard to the reading porch. That’s the storage shed on the left. The back panel of the storage shed has been deliberately painted to look like that on the end of the casita, which makes the end panel of the casita look even more like just a design detail. More on that in a minute.

This is taken from the gazebo looking down on the area behind the storage shed. In a few places we elected to put trees or shrubs directly into the ground.

The details on the railings don’t show up as well as I would like, but the little cap in the foreground consists of three pieces routed with a bull nose, roundover, and cove. The railings themselves consist of three pieces for the top railing, two pieces for the bottom railing, and all the spindles have coves routed on the four corners.

This is looking toward the rear of the casita. The details of the posts don’t show up as well as I’d like, but they are 4×4s which had coves routed on all four corners. Then I attached 1×2 to the face of the posts which had roundover edges routed on them. The final result looks like a pillar rather than a post. The painted panel on the end of the casita is a wall that can be removed in the event that the spa should ever have to be replaced. My first thought was to install a huge gated door, but I couldn’t see the point of looking at hinges on a door that would be opened only once or twice in my lifetime, if that. Instead, I put in headers across the end of the casita, just as I would have done, had I installed a regular garage door. Then the beam just above the painted area had a lip cut into it so the painted portion of the wall could slip under the lip, thereby ensuring that rain does NOT run into the wall, which would be the way of it, had I not put in a drip edge. The whole thing has been carefully calked and painted and looks no different than the end panel on the storage shed (which IS just a painted detail). If I should have to remove it, it would take about half a day to do so, and another half day to put it back in, but this way I’m not looking at those hinges.

Standing on the gazebo and looking down at the seating area. I made small tables for the outside ends of both the green and blue benches and put a larger corner table in between them, so people would have a place to set down a plate and a drink.

Christine calls these the harmony bells and very much wanted them for our yard. It’s strange how things work out sometimes. I won’t comment on the paranoia of those who arranged things so she had no work the summer we finished the yard, except to thank them. That job… But, as I say, what could have been a bad situation ended up working out beautifully for us! After a while the work all runs together, so it’s hard for me to remember all the things Christine did, just that I know I would not have finished that year without her. Also, thanks to her not having a job that summer we had plenty of time to pick out the pots and plants together, which was a very fun thing to do. And now we have the yard to enjoy next year and every year thereafter. So, if that sounds a little smug, well, you just should have seen the people who ran that department! But they got their pound of flesh, and we got our yard. Bless them.

Joseph

Joseph and Christine’s

Amazing Technicolor

Dream Yard

PART TWO OF THREE

This is a good view of the casita. The portion to the left without windows is the storage area, which is accessed through the back door of the casita, which is shown in an earlier photo. To the right, in the area behind the windows is the spa. I designed the casita myself, but I had quite a bit of help from Don Davis, my contractor friend in Las Vegas. He poured the slab, directed the framing of three walls and the rafters (we worked on this together, but I worked at his direction), did all the electrical work, and showed me how to roof it. Later on I had other professionals do the stucco work. I made the doors and windows myself and did all the other work, including the interiors. This is the structure I had the most help on, and it was also the one that took the longest to complete. It took me one solid year to get this damned thing done. Since then, though, it’s been all peaches and cream!

This is at the rear of our house. I painted the whiskey barrels the three primary colors and the three secondary colors. Those by the raised planter are turquoise.

The barbeque area.

Altogether, there are four redwood benches, all of which have routed designs on them. Those farthest away have cloud lift designs.

This bench is attached to the front of the planter. This bench, like the other three, is cantilevered over the bricks, so if I ever have to replace the bricks, I won’t have to tear up my benches to do so.

Joseph

Next: PART THREE (The Conclusion)

Joseph and Christine’s

Amazing Technicolor

Dream Yard

PART ONE OF THREE

I have discussed the impetus for this yard on our sister blog CFT411.com, so here I thought I would simply post some more pictures of it, for those who may be interested. I won’t repeat what I already said in the blog on that site, except to say here that all of the work and all of the designs (with just two exceptions which I will discuss in good time) are my own. I worked on this yard for part of the year every year for ten years, except for the casita which required an entire year of my labor to complete. The detail pictures and their captions follow.

This is a picture of the “long and winding wall” and a picture of the back door of the casita, which leads to a small storage area. There are some four hundred stones in this wall, each of which weights 23 pounds, a total of four-and-a-half tons. The wall is 110 feet long, and there are flowers running the entire length and the sixteen additional feet beside the covered patio (which is not in this photo). At the far right in the right photo, beside the blue whiskey barrel, is the corner of the house.

I’m standing in front of the door for the storage area of the casita and looking at the reading porch. What looks like solid panels in this photo is actually panels of ¾” spindles. Altogether there are 166 spindles, all of which were installed with mortise and tenon joints, a total of 332 joints.

This is the storage shed, which we purchased as a prefabricated unit. Christine and I still had to put it together (took us two months to do so), but the design was done by others. She had the summer off that year, which came right in the nick of time, really, as without her help I would definitely have been looking at another summer working in the yard. As it was, we finished late in the year, but we did finish THAT year! I deliberately chose this particular shed to match the casita I had already made.

This is another view of the reading porch. The detail is very poor, but there’s a stylized cloud lift routed into the top of the reading porch.

This is a view of the walkway in front of the casita. The planter is on the far right. You can also see a portion of the seating area and a portion of the gazebo.

This is a view of the gazebo. It is really a raised deck, but when we first discussed it, it was going to be a traditional gazebo, and it eventually evolved into this. The portion to the right of the awnings is raised up one step from the main deck under the awnings. I’m standing on the reading porch.

Joseph

Next: PART TWO