Dog House Door, Gates, Potted Plants, and Organization Project

Winter Dog Door and Threshold for Dog House.

In the winter one door and side vents will be blocked off in the dog house. The second door will have a raised threshold the dogs will have to step over. The threshold will help keep cedar chips in the dog house. I made the dog house door to look like the front door.

House Front Door vs. Dog House Door:

Dog House Winter Door and Threshold: (fringe's head shadow)

Gates and Fencing

I have been slowly painting the wrought iron fencing and gates. I also had a gate installed down in the "pit"area by the pool. This area only had an old piece of chain link fence propped up against the wall with rocks. I installed the footer and threshold block before the gate was installed. The dog yard originally had a single gate up against the house which made it difficult getting things into the back yard. I had the fencing reconfigured and a double gate installed. New gates and old gates and fencing are painted anodized bronze.

"Before" fence in need of a repaint:

New gate in pool "pit' area:

Reconfigured gate and fence in dog yard:

Potted Plants in Ramada Area

NE corner under Ramada:

Plants on each side of gate to dog yard:

Organization Project

I needed a sturdier way to store my various paper/office products. The cheap cardboard organizer was not cutting it. I built these two storage boxes out of 3/4" oak plywood. The shelves (which can be removed) are out of 1/4" masonite. The boxes were stained with English Chestnut and topped with a tung oil finish.

Metal Roof, Gong, & Fountain Area

The metal roof over the bar area and on the dog house are now finished. (The sections of fence in the lower left are surrounding a desert willow until it is big enough to be dog proof. And the red thing on the right is the concrete mixer that I need to get out of the dog yard.)

I bought an Indonesian gong from gongs-unlimited. It is 18 inches in diameter (sorry I couldn't spend over a grand for a 36" one). It is hanging across from the front door since I don't have a doorbell.

The fountain area was surrounded by ugly white rock. (I like natural rocks.) The metal outlet for the fountain was rusted out from being too close to the ground. I repaired, raised and replaced the outlet, bought a new pump and planted Liriope (monkey grass) around the fountain.

Fountain Area Before:

Fountain Area After:

Well, I think it looks much better. The pot with an aloe is to partially block the electrical outlet box. The big bush is a jojoba which probably took up residence by itself (They are one of the most prolific desert shrubs and it does stay (grayish) green year round.

The Finished 2 Dog Dogport

On a previous post I had my conceptual design for a 2 dog dogport.



Well it is now a reality but it certainly took along time. I bought the sump block in the summer. Dug the trench for the footer in August. I finally got around to pouring the footer the last week of February. The next weekend I built the block walls.



Early Week 3 consisted of filling in the block voids with concrete and embedding the anchors for the front beam. The end of Week 3 saw the concrete slab for the floor poured.

Weekend 4 was the final push to frame and install the roof. I always seem to injure myself while doing all of my projects. This one was no different. While carrying the front beam around back I lost my footing on the loose rock and dirt and fell scrapping and cutting my knees.

The roof framework is installed: (I painted all of the wood prior to installation leaving only touch up work when finished.)


The underside of the beams is a textured exterior siding so it looks nice from underneath (because dogs like nice looking things in their house too!). Here I show part of the inside roof and the 2" rigid insulation. The final dogport will have the entire underside of the roof covered and insulated including the overhang.



I capped the sump block with these accent tiles (leftover pool tiles I found in the garage):


The finished 2 dog dog house (without final roof):


The floor is saltillo tile to match the other covered porches. The grout is still wet so appears darker. The dogport roof will have the same metal roof as the roof over the bar area (pics in later post). I plan to get some large pieces of flagstone to put out front. The final exterior walled area is 4' x 7' and there is a 2' overhang From the inside there are views of the mountains through the doors and a view of saguaros on the hillside through the NW side vent. Now all Fringe needs is a solar porch light ;-). In the winter one door will be blocked by a door made to match the house front door and the other doorway will have a panel the dogs will step over that will serve to contain ceder chips. The side vents will also have a panel built to close them off.

The Damage (Cost of Materials):

$863

Price Update 11-9-2008: Total is now $916.28 after building door and threshold and bolts hardware to hold them in place.

Not counting the future flagstone (Update on 11-9-2008: I have nixed the flagstone until I plan the landscape design for the entire dog yard). Cost includes block, concrete, mortar, rebar, anchors, lumber, insulation, metal roof, tile, thinset and grout. I provided all labor for free.

Bar Skylight Take Two + Roof

As you may recall from an earlier posting I repaired existing drywall water damage in the bar area. I also had tiled around the skylight and bar area with slate. Unfortunately the roof above the bar leaked like a sieve even though the previous owners claimed it had been repaired. So this facilitated replacing the bar skylight and repairing the roof. (Requiring the demolition of my previous slate tiling)

Here is a before picture:

It's not a surprise that the roof leaked the existing skylight installation and flashing was ridiculous. The flashing was not overlapping properly so water could easily get in. The skylight glass was attached directly to the roof tile along the front edge with caulking and cement. The supposed fixed roof consisted of applying big blobs of caulking which only served to back up the water underneath the spanish tile because downward flow was then blocked.

The new skylight I installed was slightly smaller so I had to frame up the opening. I also repaired the roof decking and replaced the rotted fascia. The new roof will be metal PBU panels.





Here is the finished roof repair and new skylight waiting for the anodized bronze metal roof.



The finished Bar Skylight:


Since this picture was taken AZ Solar solutions came out and refilmed the skylight glass with Huper Optik Drei. I have also painted the electrical box and conduit anodized bronze. The final picture with the new metal roof will appear in a future post.

Invisible Fence

During the day Fringe and her doggie day care visitor Cazie stay in the fenced in dog yard.
Fringe:

When I'm home they have access to the entire patio, ramada, pool and covered porch area. This area is either fenced in or self contained by retaining walls. Unfortunately the temptation of rabbits, javalina, coyotes and birds proved too difficult for Fringe to resist jumping off the wall. The end of July 2007 I had an invisible fence installed along the sections of the wall the pooches could possibly jump off. It works pretty well but I would not leave Fringe loose without being home because there are too many wildlife temptations for a hunting dog around the house.

My mom sent this cartoon to me.

Floor Plan

OK so I am a real nerd. I measured and created my house floor plan in AutoCAD. I even have a version that has all of the electrical marked. However I can say that I don't have it modeled in 3D in Pro/E like a friend of mine has their house. I don't have the stables modeled.

You can click on the picture to enlarge or use this link to the floor plan pdf file so you can actually read it better.

Aerial Views

Here are some aerial views of the property. You can click to enlarge.

The black line property boundary is off. The yellow boundary is closer but still not exact.

Old For Sale Flyers

Even though my mom and I did not remember it, It seems I have had my eye on this house for a while. Previous times the house was up for sale (1996 and 1999) I had mailed my mom the flyer telling her she should buy it. My mom has been cleaning up her office and found the flyers on two different occasions in piles of stuff I had sent her.

The 1996 Sale Flyer:

The 1999 Sale Flyer:

Who wouldn't buy from this guy ;-) Real estate agents are swarmy like used car salesmen and why do they have to plaster their faces everywhere? They also should join the 21st Century and stop using fax machines.

The 2007 Sale Flyer (When I got the house):

Our real estate agent was an idiot. We like to call her "birdbrain" or "The Shredder" (there's a story behind that one). Since real estate agents insist on putting their photos on business cards one day we had a talent search to draw her picture. Here are some submissions:

Exterior Doors and Misc. Update

I have mostly been doing some landscape work. This is a sampling of what I have planted:
3 Chilean mesquite trees, 1 desert willow tree, 1 lysiloma feather tree, 5 ocotillos, 4 Mexican bird of paradise, 4 Arizona yellow bells, 1 boojum, 3 desrt milkweeds, mexican honysuckles, baja fairy duster, salvias, hedgehog cactus, mexican fence post cacti, trailing indigo bush, chuparosa, cat's claw vine, etc. Unfortunately a big saguaro with an arm that was by the pool equipment fell over a couple of weeks ago. Luckily it did not take out anything else plant or property with it.

I am slowly painting the wrought iron fence. The exterior doors were painted a nice blue color.

Guest Bedroom

The guest bedroom was plain Navajo white with the 80's mirrored closet doors.

Before:

After:

The ceiling was painted ultra pure white and the walls Restful (a sagy green). As a cheap temporary fix the gold frame of the mirrored doors was painted dark anodized bronze and the mirrors painted Garden Wall (a grayish taupe brown). This will do until I change the closet doors. The bed is queen size black metal. I still would like to get a dark wood nightstand, bedside lamp and chair for the corner and maybe "a shrubbery".

Master Bedroom

I painted the master bedroom Gobi Desert and the fireplace Toffee Crunch. The inside of all bedroom and hall closets are painted Parchment Paper.

Before:




After:

Door Knobs Galore

At some point in time I had planned on replacing ALL the door knobs inside and outside with Baldwin wave levers in distressed oil rubbed bronze. I did not plan on doing this now but I stumbled upon a clearance at one Lowes in town that I normally don't go to so I bought everything they had that I needed. The prices were more than half the price I could find on the internet (eg. a $66 deadbolt for $15 ridiculously cheap). Unfortunately the other Lowes in town did not have theirs on sale. In fact one guy was completely shocked at the price I got because the Baldwin stuff is never on clearance or on sale. Basically because it was a clearance the other stores don't have to honor the prices so I will be getting the 3 remaining interior door knob sets from the internet. What does this mean? I unexpectedly spent money on something I had not planned on doing right now and spent time this weekend installing the knobs.

The old knobs consisted of the type found at a bargain basement clearance at the cheapest store in town in 1980 where they couldn't get all to match. Below we have different types and shades of antique brass and shiny chrome.

Knobs before:

Knobs after: Soo much better and the levers can be operated in both direction and without a hand.

Garage Cabinets & Support Posts

After a vacation hiatus I'm back to work. I hated the fake wood laminate cabinets in the garage. I also hate peg board so that came down. I primed the cabinets and painted them and the posts Rocky Creek. I had a custom metal shop make a 24 gauge galvanized top for the built in workbench. The is another set of built-ins close to the door opening that I'm most likely going to remove completely. This fall when it cools off I'll epoxy coat the garage floor a tan color.

Before:


After: