The silt fence

I’ve never heard of a silt fence either. It’s a temporary sediment control device used on construction sites to protect water quality in nearby areas. In this case, it will keep all of the construction mess out of the river.

The white string is representing where the posts and bulkhead will be.

When the tide is low we have a little shore line. Sometimes you can see washed up garbage or shoes, but this morning it looks nice and pretty. Maybe Donnie cleaned it up.

Here are the posts ready to be installed.

And here’s the first post in. Hallelujah!

This morning the wood was delivered. A nice man in a large truck showed up and dropped it in the front yard. I believe it’s the wood that’s going to make up the wall.

So that’s where we are right now. I’m sure some good progress will be made this weekend.

The bulk of it

Donnie’s focus over the last 2 weeks has been the exterior and the bulkhead. Our house is on a bluff and has no seawall. I don’t know if they are called seawalls in S. Florida and bulkheads up here, but moving forward I’ll call it a bulkhead since that’s what Donnie calls it.

The DEP came out a month ago and told us that if we wanted to avoid taxes and fees we need to start our bulkhead right about where that tree is in the picture below. It’s about 5 feet back from our neighbors on the north side.

This next picture gives some perspective on how far down the water is from the house. We will gain a lot of yard by getting the bulkhead in, filling it in, and getting some grass down.

Here’s our neighbor’s bulkhead to the south. Ours will be set back the same amount as on the other side I believe.

This is another perspective from the water line. You can probably tell that the yard is way above my head. The north neighbors have a tiered yard with stair steps going down to the river and the other neighbors have a gradual slope. I think Donnie is leaning towards tiers. We’ll see. He changes his mind a lot.

Lastly, this is Tim trying to clean up the house a little bit. Ultimately the house is going to have a Key West look with siding and a metal roof, but for now we are just painting the concrete block to freshen it up a bit. After the bulkhead is in, Donnie is going to build the detached garage in the front. It’s going to be funny having a fancy, tropical garage sitting in front of the un-fancy, block house. Oh well, it will only be temporary.

So that’s all for now. This pics are 2 weeks old, so Donnie actually has the shore line all cleared and level and ready for the posts. I’ll have to get out and get more pics today.

Pantry Progress

One of the things that I was so excited about in this new kitchen was an actual walk-in pantry. We’ve never had one before. In our first two houses we just had a closet. I was so excited about having more space and hopefully more organization.

Here’s what’s been in the pantry since we moved in. It’s an old shelving unit. As you can see, it provided the opposite of organization. Once we started working on the pantry it was in the middle of the kitchen for 2 weeks. That was even worse.

Donnie made his measurements and made sure they were level.

He had a little helper when it came to building the shelves.

Here’s all the shelves up and ready to be painted.

Somehow I missed taking a picture of it completely painted. We are skipping straight ahead to the pantry all loaded up.

The light fixture is from Lowe’s.

As you can see, there’s plenty of room and we are able to see everything that’s in there. We made the kids’ snack shelf towards the bottom so that they can be more self sufficient.

This is the original door that was in that doorway, although it used to be the doorway into the old kitchen. It’s just hanging there temporarily. We are going to replace it with a French door that will match the kitchen windows. I’m debating which color to paint it. I think a pop of color would be cool. We’ll see. Painting a French door is pretty tedious and I don’t want to have to paint it twice if I change my mind.

Here’s what’s going on right now. The guys are outside painting and setting up the posts that will make up the bulkhead. Once the bulkhead is in we can start on the detached garage. Woo hoo!

Have a great Mother’s Day.