New Driveway Gate

At last, our new driveway gate is installed! I showed off the design in this post here.  I designed this in Adobe Illustrator and had it built by Creative Iron Works of Signal Hill.  


Creative Iron Works did an outstanding job and worked with me the whole way on gate function, optimizing the design and color selection for the wood.  I couldn't be happier with my choice of vendor, Creative Iron Works was exactly the type of company I'd been looking for to complete this project.  

Old Driveway Gate Going Away

New Driveway Gate Installed

The stain used on the wood was Minwax Red Oak and the wrought iron on the gate was powder coated black. 

Adding to the Irrigation System

The latest project here is another one that's been on the list for a loooonnnnggg time.  The more things I can put on a timer, the happier my weekends are! 


With the mission of automation in mind, I added a new irrigation run to water plants along the far side of the driveway.  This, of course, involved running a line UNDER the driveway.  

Planning the irrigation run

Irrigation is not the worst of improvement projects, but it is one of the messier (not quite as bad as furniture refinishing, but certainly right up there.)  Running irrigation under driveways and walkways is a muddy proposition since it involves water and dirt. 


If you are planning to try this yourself, you'll need a walkway tunneling kit, which is available at any big box improvement store for cheap.  The tunneling kit is really just a nozzle and cap by which you use your garden hose and a piece of irrigation PVC to  blast a tunnel under the concrete with water.  It requires some planning since your PVC pipe has to be long enough to reach completely under the concrete.  


Which also means that your trench in which to run the pipe has to be long enough to accommodate the length of the PVC pipe.  Since I only had about 28 inches to work with in terms of trench space there in the middle, it required 3 separate pieces of PVC that were joined together by couplers.  You can see the segments in the picture below. 

Getting this project done was a waiting game since you have to wait for the water to filter down into your soil after you've spray blasted your run under the concrete.  In heavy clay soil like mine, it can take an hour or more.  This project took about 23' of PVC and various couplers, elbows, a new battery operated timer, and plenty of patience over two days.  


Plus some muscle relaxers for an aching back, afterward :)

New Garage Side Door

Our latest project has been to replace the side door on the garage...at some point you'd think we would run out of parts of this house that are at the end of their lifespan and need replacing, but sadly no.  


The side door to the garage has spent 70 years getting splashed on during the winter since none of the previous owners ever put up a gutter so that rainwater wouldn't end up pouring off the side of the garage roof and right in front of this door.  It hasn't helped that the door is right next to the hose bib and we tend to like to do cleaning tasks in the area that also end up splashing the door.  

This is the old door, badly rotted.

And so, off came the old door and we picked up a new basic exterior slab door at the local big box home improvement store.  We ended up having to do some considerable cutting down since the old opening is several inches smaller than the width of the smallest door they had at the store.  The new door was also pre-primed (yay!) 

After some cutting and sanding, then hole drilling and painting, we have a new door on the side of the garage.  Not only did we add a threshold and door sweep to make sure we are catching any water issues right at the door, we also bought a Plexiglas panel to put on the lower part of the door. 

New door with Plexiglas panel.

This is our last garage project until later this year when we start on the second set of interior cabinets, which can't happen until after I get some electrical work done (currently scheduled to happen when I bring in electricians for the kitchen remodel.)

Re-setting the walkway

This lovely project was one that I've had on the list for two years (easily).  I originally installed the front walkways in 2006 using Pathmate stone molds and this one turned into a mess within year.  All the mortar between the stones cracked and crumbled.  What I eventually realized was that I hadn't done a very good job leveling out my stones during the initial install.  Since the stones hadn't been leveled, they started flexing when walked on, which lead to the mortar cracking. 

The initial install in 2006

It got to be entirely too easy to move re-setting the walkway stones down the list in favor of more pressing items, but since I'm on a "complete all outstanding projects" rampage the time has come.  


I found it easiest to work one row at time, this allowed me keep the original placement and shape without having to go back and guess.  As I pulled up each row, I removed all the old mortar and some of the bed materials under the stones.  Then I added new sand and look a lot of care in setting the stones back in LEVEL and solid. 

Resetting the stones, one row at a time

It took about 4 hours to complete this project, a new bag of mortar mix and a bag of sand.  I have hopes that this time I did a better job..ah, that learning curve! 

Finished reset of walkway stones

Driveway Gate

The time has come to replace the gate for the driveway and add a new gate on the side of the house.  After my house was broken into in 2007 and a second (unrelated) attempt was made last year, it has become apparent that the house is just too "inviting" and looks potentially "easy" to an opportunist.  So, additional fortification was on the menu for this Winter to make the hacienda more secure.  


This is the old gate: warped, ugly, and ready to fall off the hinges.

Old Driveway Gate

The new gate will be glorious - I've designed the ironwork myself and the construction will be done by Creative Iron Works in Signal Hill.  Budget this time around will not allow for the gate to be motorized, although that is in the plan for the future.  Motors will add another $2500 to the project and those are funds really needed for the kitchen remodel later this year.  


Design for the new gate: 

Re-roofing the Garage

The garage roof started leaking last spring and I knew we were going to have to re-roof before the winter rains hit.  The garage still had its original roof from 1939, plus an extra layer of shingles on top of that.  The side that faces Southwest had really deteriorated to the point where it was starting to slough off in light wind. 


We expected this process to be messy since there was no sheathing underlayment, just cedar shingles nailed right onto the slats.  In preparation for the amount of debris that would be falling in, we pulled everything out that was on the floor and then tarped down the walls to create "slides" for debris to end up (mostly) in the center of the floor. 

Tarping the Garage Walls

This system worked fairly well and got easily 9/10's of the debris.  We still had to clean off the beams and some of the edges of the walls, but most of the gunk landed right where we wanted it and easy to sweep up. 


The re-roof took approx 1.5 days.  The first day was tear-off of the old roofing, cleaning and repair of some damaged spots by termites and rot, followed by new sheathing.  The second day, they put down the tar paper and shingles. 

Ready to Start Sheathing

Whirlybird Goes Here!

All work was done by Long Beach Roofing and we were happy with the job they did. They cleaned up each day and were a pleasure to work with.

Almost Finished!

Garage Cabinets - Finished!

At last, this project concludes.  Results below, before and after:

What we started with - old garage shelving

New garage cabinets and shelving - well worth it!

The shelf section next to the cabinet was built with 12" melamine since we needed to accommodate the swing of the door. There will eventually be another set of cabinets and shelving built to the right of this area - but that won't happen until I have some electrical work done on that side (scheduled for AFTER the kitchen remodel early next year.)  Next up on our hit parade this fall/winter is a re-roof of the garage.