We’re used to small yards (or “gardens” as us Brits call ’em) so our outdoor space is a little overwhelming. It spans four areas; front and back yards (both with scruffy-looking lawns), a side patio (where we spend most outdoor time) and this entrance jungle courtyard. We’ve roughed-out simple plans for all four areas (which …
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Tag Archives: entrance courtyard
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courtyard chaos
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more doors
Our lime green front door was the first, and biggest, of four external door projects on our list. With that done, we tackled the door leading from our kitchen into the garage. It’s the white one you can see in the distance below. Previously, we couldn’t unlock this door from the garage side –we had …
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door to door
The weather continues to be mild –at least to us, as we’ve grown accustomed to Boston winters. So, it seemed like a good opportunity to paint our front door, and fit new hardware. The weather’s relevant, as we’d be temporarily door-less. Et voilà… We’d love to install a new door, but budget dictated sticking with …
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door film
The glass panel beside our front door is completely transparent. People can see right into our living space, and get a good sense if anyone is home. Later Eichler models used opaque glass for this panel, so we decided to mimic that, while solving the security issue. The sunlight in the above ‘before’ shot means …
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redwood replacement
Just a quick bit of maintenance on the courtyard area, by our entrance. Between each of the poured concrete panels is a thin piece of redwood. These have been untouched for nearly 60 years, and they’re showing it. Some are completely rotten. So, we decided to replace them with new redwood. This was pretty cheap, …
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letter plate
This gold letter plate really stands out. And not in a good way. We wanted a simple, flat, silver replacement. Turns out, that’s not so simple. There are some okay(ish) options around, but the only one we really like is this one. But we’re not spending $225 on a letter plate. So we didn’t. We …
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tree city
Sacramento is nicknamed city of trees, so we were prepared. We just didn’t bank on so many being in our yard. We removed the only real problem tree, as I mentioned, but there are more on our hit-list. And things could have been far worse. This 2011 Google Streetview pic clearly shows the trees had …
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the leak
The weekend started out in familiar fashion –with a checklist of jobs, and plenty of enthusiasm. Then I spotted a small puddle of water on our courtyard path. We dug down a little to discover a leaky sprinkler pipe…and it got worse from there. First step, stop the water. The shutoff valves (one mains, one …
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