Mike and Jeff's New House

   We're excited to report that our house is finally, really, officially DONE!  The shower hardware in the third-floor bathroom was installed this past weekend.   Yes, we moved in back in June of 2006....Don't judge... 

How's it possible that it's already been ten years since we built our house? It seems like we just moved in.  Since moving in during the summer of 2006 we have been busy with lots of landscaping projects, here are some current views. The Elm Tree that we planted in the front has really started to take off, by this time next year it will provide great shade in the afternoon. Jeff drives a Chevy Volt and he built this little hutch to hold the charging cord for the car. We are harvesting solar electric power off of our roof to feed his vehicle. One of our favorite projects was to install this outdoor shower.  We hardly ever use the shower in our bathroom during the summer months. The hot tub is in the same garden room as the outdoor shower and the retractable clothes line, it's our own little bit of heaven... The final big project in our garden is finishing this home greenhouse.  I will use it to start vegetable seeds and to overwinter my tender succu

It's been a while since we have posted here. I will push some new photos up over the holidays.  We have added the hot tub and outdoor shower... All we have left to add is the greenhouse and this project will finally be `done'.

Our fountains bring a bit of sound and movement to the patio, the vessels are from Green Acres Nursery in Sacramento and the patio was installed by Lee Reveles Landscape.

Our installer was Lee Reveles Landscape, HIGHLY recommended, they did excellent work...

  Pavers in the driveway that leads to the alley

We installed a Weathermatic irrigation system controller.  It is connected to an on-site weather station that monitors temperature, rainfall, windspeed, and humidity. As the seasons change, it automatically adjusts the station timing, very handy! UPDATE:  We had nothing but trouble with this controller and in 2016 we replaced it with a dramatically better one from Rachio. See it here: https://www.rachio.com/ Better yet, the City of Sacramento has a rebate program to replace old controllers with `smart' controllers like the Rachio, check it out here: https://www.cityofsacramento.org/Utilities/Conservation/Rebates/River-Friendly-Landscape-Rebate  

We are building a fire-pit into the patio on the freeway side of the house.  The first step in the process was building a masonry bench on one side of it, the bench is done and the gas line is installed, next up is installing the burner and the patio pavers...

We have been staining fences for 5 weekends and have lured many friends into helping us...it takes a long time, but the results are worth it...

We are installing a fountain system that will use 3 linked aqua basins from Aquascapes.