Driveway Complete

The workers finished the driveway this morning, bringing the house that much closer to completion.  It really gives a nice finish to the house, and a big relief from the dirt and rocks that has been the existing driveway for almost a year.

Pavers Coming Up The Driveway

The paver company has been on site since early Wednesday, setting the pavers and bringing them up the driveway.  This will be a big welcome and relief over the dirt and clumsy rocky driveway that has been there since the since the first grading and clearing of the lot.  It's looking very luxurious and the colors are blending in perfectly with the surrounding desert and the house itself.  It's an exciting time as things are finally coming together!

And it was such a beautiful morning this Saturday, with crystal clear blue skies and a nice breeze.

View of Driveway Pavers from Guest Bathroom

Full View of Front of House, with Hint of Pavers

Pavers Coming Up The Driveway

Closer View of Pavers

Pavers on East Side of House

Pavers To Front of Garage

Garage Door and Pavers

Garage Door and Pavers

Turn of Driveway Around East Side of House

Pavers and Colors of House

East Side of House

Pavers against the Garage Floor

Looking Back Up Driveway

More Progress on Melody

Several things were going on in the last couple weeks at Melody Drive. The drywallers finished mudding and sanding the walls, and now they are very smooth.  The texturing is very slight, and we are happy that it's not as "bumpy" as the old walls in Ahwatukee were.  The stucco company made good progress both on the brown coat of the house and the plastering of the retaining wall around the driveway.  The painters started their prep work inside, with the first stain of the interior doors and starting with calking and taping off.  The finish carpenter began laying out the shelves in the pantry and building out the closets in the bedrooms.  It's all coming together quite nicely!

Kitchen Taped Off And Mudded

Kitchen View Toward West

Jungle of Scaffolding

Family Room Taped Off

Driveway Retaining Wall Plaster Coat

View of Brown Coat on West Side

Upper Driveway Retaining Wall Plaster

Interior Doors Waiting for Stain Coat

More Interior Door Waiting for Stain

Interior Doors with First Stain Coat

George Checks out The Stain

Measuring the Light On The Patio

Doors Stained and Drying in the Kitchen

The Pipe

With the main stem walls poured and curing, excavation continued for the retaining wall next to the neighbor's driveway.  During excavation, we found that there was a 3 inch city pipe buried next to the driveway on our lot.  The City gave us no indication that there was a pipe there, it was discovered only during excavation. We called the city and asked about it, and sure enough, when they city approved our plans, the person doing on the review forgot to turn on the city pipe layer in their CAD maps.  If they had noticed this pipe during the review, they would have denied our permit, since a retaining wall cannot be built within 5 feet of a pipe.  But if the had noticed, we would have adjusted our plans and moved the retaining wall away from the pipe.  Now that the footer and stem walls are poured, we can't just simple move everything over to the right.  The City asked us to go back to the engineer and evaluate what would be necessary to backfill with the pipe in place.  This took time and money. The engineer came up with a plan to put a half-sack slurry around the pipe, which cost us extra.  I think in the end we worked it out, but it did take over a month and several thousand dollars to resolve.

Rocks

We can start to see the area where the excavator dug out for the foundation footer stem walls, leaving a large pile of rocks.  Further to the right, we can see where they cut into the neighbor's driveway to make way for our retaining wall where out driveway will go.  The neighbor's driveway was actually on our lot by a few feet, so the workers cut some of their driveway.