Update on Retaining Wall Fountain

I've gotten some more done on the retaining wall fountain this past weekend.  Previously I made a polyurethane rubber mold of the clay fountain head that I made as shown in the picture below.

 

I cast one out of concrete using the polyurethane mold and mortared it in place.  I also cast a base for the lower basin and cast an upper basin using some bowls that I sourced from a dollar store and cut in half.

Now I need to get the lower basin form assembled and get it cast.

Raised Garden Bed Complete

Finished the cover for the first raised garden bed.  Decided to go with EMT conduit for the frame to support the netting.

Here are the assembled hoops setup in a trial run.  I decided to add bars at the base on each side and double up the end hoops to create a track system with some PVC connectors to allow the netting on each side to be raised and lowered.  You can see in the next two pictures with the netting installed the track system that allows the bar on each side slide up with the netting for access to the garden bed from each side.

New Front Door

Haven't been able to do much with the driveway retaining wall lately because I have been busy installing a new front door to the house.  This upgrade was way overdue.  The original door looked more like a back door. It also had a left hand in-swing instead of the right hand in-swing that you see on the new door.  That made it really awkward to squeeze into the entryway.

Here are the finished install pics.

Stone Raised Garden Bed Completed!

The coping along the top edge of the raised bed are some concrete pavers that I picked up at the local home center.

The next step will be to build a frame over the raised bed for netting to cover the plants, so that my family can enjoy the vegetables instead of the deer.

Slow getting started this spring

Between the weather and finding time to dig in (pun intended), I have gotten off to a slow start this spring.  The first priority before getting back to the driveway retaining wall was to get some good edging down around the raspberry beds, both to keep the lawn out, and the raspberries in.

Here's what I came up with...

The next priority this spring is getting the raised garden beds put together.  Again, I went with stone.  Surprise!  Here you can see some cement pavers that I will use as a coping for the top edge laid out to check for fit and give me an idea of how much cutting I will need to do.

Once these are mortared in level, I will construct a frame over the bed to support netting, or row cover.

Fountain Head Prototyping

So here is the blank slate that will eventually become the fountain in my stone retaining wall.  I will install a basin at the foot and a smaller basin directly beneath the spout.  I originally planned to just do a bent copper pipe for the spout, but then decided to do something a little fancier.

Out comes the clay for some prototyping.  Here is the progress thus far:

Still needs a lot of refinement.  I will finish the clay model and then pour a silicone mold to create a concrete casting that can then be mounted to the fountain spout.

Time to shed some light on things

Some lights for the front walk have been long overdue.  I thought about using solar lights, but battery performace in them suffers in the cold winters that we have.  So in the end I went with low voltage LED path lights.  These pathway lights use 3 watt LEDs and are plenty bright.

Here's a few pics just before dusk as I finished the install.

Just before hooking them up to power:

Power hooked up and all of the lights are lit!

Cables buried and project complete!