Retirement

Our contractor finished painting the courtyard wall today. He would have been done yesterday except the paint sprayer he brought didn’t have enough capacity to spray the thick paint. They finished using a larger unit this morning.

Image: painted wall with the arch on the right. Click to enlarge.

All that remains on the courtyard is to get rocks spread out for the ground cover and an irrigation system installed for the shrubs and trees to come later. We also are planning on getting some custom gates built and installed for the archway and the backyard access.

The masons showed up today to start on the wall for our courtyard today. They made excellent progress getting most of the blocks in place up to the point where the back gateway and entry arch will be built. Click on the image to enlarge.

Yesterday, we ordered the security doors for the house. Since we have Santa Fe style architecture, we’re going with doors that reflect the style. The figure at the bottom of the door is Kokopeli, a Native American icon seen throughout the southwest. The sunset and the symbol in the center of the door are also Native American style.

Damsel and I originally contacted a vendor we found on the internet. We started the process with them but soon realized they weren’t responding to our inquiries about custom colors and styles like they weren’t paying attention or something.

When we made a trip to the Phoenix Metro area for supplies, quite by accident we found another steel screen door vendor in a strip mall. We went in and discovered that not only did they have the exact same doors as the on-line guys, but offered them at less than half the cost we were originally quoted. We arranged for a measurement session with the new guys and called the others to cancel.

Since we’re paying much less for the doors, we decided to get steel doors for the patio and garage door. They should be installed in about four weeks.