I’ve been working on some sketches lately for a new buffet piece that I was looking to have our cabinetmaker Eastvold Custom build. I had contacted Matt Eastvold to talk with him about some ideas and he was excited to share with me a sneak peak, at some of the new custom furniture work that they have been designing and building. One of the pieces that really caught my attention was an incredible reclaimed Douglas Fir, Credenza. This along with a handful of other really incredible custom pieces will be on display and for sale Friday, July 11th, at the 9th St. Entry Gallery, in the Rossmor Building, St. Paul, MN. I’m really excited to see this and the rest of the pieces that they have to showcase first hand, I’m sure I wont be disappointed.

The reclaimed, Douglas Fir Timber, Credenza, stands 23″ tall, 16″ deep and 48″ long. The wood came from the Duluth Timber Company and was reclaimed from Albina Homestead School in Portland, Oregon. I can’t help but think how nice a similar but slightly larger piece would look in my house.

When I saw my first picture of a rain garden I was by no means enthusiastic about some kidney shaped, cedar chipped  planting, randomly placed in my yard. However our Architect (Micheal Huber) wasn’t envisioning anything even close to this in his head, when he suggest we use them. Instead he designed these beautiful geometric concrete beds that would work as rain gardens but look more like an extension of our homes design. Today the concrete forms were removed and we got our first glimpse at what I have to say is something really incredible looking. The plywood sheeting that was used to form up the sides left a great texture in the concrete and the open spout that was thought of and built into the mouth of the design (by our concrete guys) looks incredible. They were so cool that Fred Lutz (our main concrete guy) took photos of the work himself and then asked us to let him know when they were completed with the plantings, so he could come back and take some more photos.

One of the Lutz boys knocks out the foam they used to create the overflow spouts in the forms.

I loved seeing this photo that Stacy took, because when I went out to look at the back rain garden this afternoon their was no dirt around which means they cleaned it up and laid the sod down along the side of it.

Next step, planting.

I love how neat their forms are and how they used a piece of plywood to shield our lawn from getting splashed with concrete.

Fred puts the finishing touch on the second of two rain gardens, off the back of the house.

Our concrete guys (Fred Lutz and his sons) were back this week to frame up and ultimately pour our rain gardens. Typical rain gardens are kidney shaped, organic depressions cut into the ground. However, in an effort to keep with our geometric theme, our architect Michael Huber had designed the rain gardens to be a series of step downs poured from concrete.

The rain gardens purpose is to manage rainwater run off from the two largest surface areas of our house, the roof, and the driveway. By trafficking the water from these two areas into the garden we help to minimize erosion, flooding and pollution that reaches ponds, streams and ultimately our drinking water.

The gardens had been designed with an overflow spout at the front of the forms but as we started forming them up, one of the concerns we had was that it would need to be very deep to hold a fair amount of water and not dump it back onto the driveway, before they reached the overflow point. In order to do so the overflow spout was starting to look a bit too exaggerated in my opinion. As a solution, one of Fred’s sons suggested we use a piece of rigid foam insulation and create a scupper like opening in the mouth of the garden, an idea that I love and can’t wait to see, once the forms come off this weekend.

I’m sore this morning. My back is stiff my knees are aching and I think I may have successfully developed carpel tunnel in both wrists but I feel great! Why, you might ask? Well my yard is finally filled with turf.

Friday evening our landscape architect (Dustin Halverson from Village Green) and his crew finished framing up the landscape edging and planned to complete the final grade of our lawn early Saturday morning. Our sod was scheduled to arrive on Saturday between 12 and 2pm. I hate when companies give you a window of time when something will arrive, “…yes sir your item should arrive between noon on Tuesday and 5 pm Wednesday, will someone be there to sign for it.” and inevitably they are almost always running late.

We had made plans to begin laying our sod sometime after 2pm and were going to use the morning to do our prep-work. Then around 10am I looked out the front windows to see a semi-truck from Jirik Sod Farm parked in front of our house, they were early, and we were nowhere near completing our prep-work. After getting the driver to quickly unload the sod to various parts of the lawn, Dusty finished grading the front yard while I and one of his workers focused on clearing out the circles in the driveway. By 11am we were laying sod. At first it seemed like we were flying and it was only going to be a few hours before the three of us were completed with the front yard and onto the back but that wasn’t the case. The front yard went deceptively quick as it was one open area with little to no cuts. I will admit that this was my personal assessment of the work at the time, however Dustin seemed to have a much great sense of urgency to his work, some 12 hours later I would realize why.

The sod arrives a bit early.

A daunting task.

Our early system was two people carrying (Dustin and Carson) and one rolling it out (yours truly). Our hired help left around 6 but another friend of mine and one of my very gracious neighbors chipped in for the next few hours to get us to the finish line.

Sunday morning things are looking good. I tossed down a few more rolls of sod and we were done. The dirt area to the left of the driveway will be the frame of our rain gardens which are under construction this week.

The circles in the driveway were something that both Dustin and I were really looking forward to seeing completed. I must say we were both pleased and it made all the hours of the work a little less painful.
When it comes down to it, 9 pallets of sod is a lot of turf (roughly 675 square yard to be exact). We had given Dustin a set of plans to work from that he then used to place our order for the sod. We had decided that at this time we were only going to do the front and side yard and would deal with the narrow strip of lawn that is our backyard at a later time. However, on our plans we forgot to mention to him that it not only shows our yard but also the easement area, a 5 foot swath around the entire lot. This coupled with the fact that he ordered a little extra for waste (usually resulting from cutting around landscaping and other obstacles because of the curved shapes). However in our case there was almost no waste at all since everything is based on right angles (except the driveway circles) leaving us with a bit more than we had planned. Although the extra sod meant we had to work extra hours to get it all down, it does mean that our yard is completely covered for now, and that’s a relief.

Early last fall (before it became apparent that we weren’t going to get our house completed in time to do the landscaping) we had spent some time looking for modern solar lights for our landscaping. We were quickly frustrated by the options that were available largely online and at most of the big box stores. Almost all of them were made out of plastic and feature a shade style design that looks like it was pulled from a little English garden, just like solar landscape lights must have looked like 100 years ago, except solar lights weren’t around 100 years. Needless to say these lights didn’t really fit our taste or the style of our house, so we were forced to look elsewhere. Unfortunately the ones we found, seemed to fall into a different tax bracket and we weren’t about fork over several hundred dollars per light. So this evening I was really excited when one of the friends we’ve made through our blog (Jeff Gallo from the 5ive house) sent us an email sharing the link to these great solar LED lights from westinghouse. They’re not only simple and modern looking but they’re made of stainless steel and best of all, affordable. They come in several different finishes along with a couple of options of height so you can utilize them in different areas around your yard to cast a variety of lighting effects. I’m thinking we’ll wait to see how our finished landscaping turns out a and then order a few sets to strategically light the yard.

Working in the mudd.

A narrow passage to the side yard.

Dustin Halveson sites the area to make sure we’re getting everything at the correct elevation.

A good trench and a solid base are key. We’ll also utilize this area to run some drain tile to channel the water from the hillside away from the house and into one of the rain gardens.

The first row of timbers go down.

A good start to our plan considering the wet conditions.

The stairs start to take their shape by the end of day on Sunday.

The east side of our house presents a significant challenge for our landscapers. We have a rather narrow walk way between the house and the small sloping hill on the east. Additionally the entire north side of the yard has a rather steep slope to it (one of the things that made many people think our lot was not suitable for a house). The solution was to build a set of stairs out of timbers that would work to provide access to the backyard while managing some of the rainwater run-off from the hillside behind the house.

Saturday morning Dustin Halverson from Village Green and a few of his workers arrived to dig around in the mud and get our landscaping going. I was pretty excited about seeing the landscaping getting done, so I was more than anxious to get my hands dirty and join in on the fun. If there was one good thing to say about all the rain we have had as of late, it certainly helped to make the ground a lot softer for digging. After about 5 hours of work we had cut our way into the hillside and laid down the groundwork for what would be the stairs and retaining wall. On Sunday Dustin and I put in another 5 hours of work and pulled together the rest of the wall, except the last few timbers that created the stairs.

I can say for certain that I am glad I wasn’y trying to do this as a do-it-yourselfer project. This was labor intensive and really pretty intricate work. Making sure everything was properly leveled and that we had the correct elevations before we started are just things that the average home owner couldn’t or wouldn’t do. Even little things like using a good base layer of class-5 gravel to set the timbers on really makes a big difference in how well the whole project pulls together and ultimately how it stands up to the test of time. It was also really nice to see that the walls were tied together with huge screws rather than the old pins that had to be pounded into place. I hope this is never the case but if we were to have to pull a section down for some reason, this certainly would make it a lot easier.