Well, sorry it's been so long since I've last written, but we've had so much happening of late! I'll try to do better (Famous last words ; D). OK, so you saw from our plans that we had a lot of ideas.
Well, the first thing we had done was to have the house painted a boring but needed off-white because we really wanted the mahogany woodwork to show through.
Yes. I know, I know, the floors are still hideous! But believe me, we'll get to it one of these days. Since we're planning on making this the formal entrance, it will DEFINITELY get resurfaced or tiled.
Then after that, we figured the next thing to attack would be to move the parking area from between the two buildings. After all, what's the use of making the houses look appealing only to have vehicles blocking your view?
So we marked off the area, had a few bushes dug up and moved and then started the excavation process. Our askari/guard is a young man going to school to become a plumber. He asked if there was anything he could do to earn some extra money. Bing, bing, bing, bing, BING!!
He got money for his school fees and we got the driveway dug out. Here's a better angle of the slope after it was dug out and then back-filled--all by hand!!
Then, he called a guy and arranged for huge boulders to be dumped off. Some were used to shore up the sides while others were broken up with a chisel and sledge hammer to smaller sizes. Then even smaller rocks were dumped on top of the boulders. All of these were raked or strategically placed for optimum coverage.
Yes. I know, I know, the floors are still hideous! But believe me, we'll get to it one of these days. Since we're planning on making this the formal entrance, it will DEFINITELY get resurfaced or tiled.
Then after that, we figured the next thing to attack would be to move the parking area from between the two buildings. After all, what's the use of making the houses look appealing only to have vehicles blocking your view?
He got money for his school fees and we got the driveway dug out. Here's a better angle of the slope after it was dug out and then back-filled--all by hand!!
Then, he called a guy and arranged for huge boulders to be dumped off. Some were used to shore up the sides while others were broken up with a chisel and sledge hammer to smaller sizes. Then even smaller rocks were dumped on top of the boulders. All of these were raked or strategically placed for optimum coverage.
Then something WONDERFUL happened to interrupt the progress we had made up to this point.
OUR CONTAINER FROM AMERICA ARRIVED!!!!!
I was quite impressed with how well the driver was able to squeeze through our gate. Can you see that he only had inches to spare on that one side??
All work came to a screeching halt while we dealt with the multitude of boxes and furniture that we shipped to fill our house and the other house on the property that will be used for guests. Of course, there were a few perks like getting to see our precious grandchildren's handy artwork.
After we got everything in a somewhat orderly arrangement (notice I didn't say opened and put away) we resumed finishing the drive by adding murrim or dirt on top of the stones.
 |
| Before Driving/Parking ramp put in |
 |
| After Driving/Parking ramp put in |
And there you have our 'semi finished' ramp for now.
After all the housing projects are done and no more heavy vehicle traffic or workmen are traipsing around the property, with wheelbarrows of bricks and cement and other tools of their trade, we'll begin the work on transforming 'the garden'. (Doesn't that so much prettier than 'the yard'?)
Until next time....
No comments:
Post a Comment