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.