Work took a little hiatus this afternoon while Paul re-graded the side yard and put in this barrier wall. (We’re calling it the Schneskey Levy.) The drama of the side yard is this:
The beautiful side yard that was once in the lot next door to us is now the location of a newly built home. The new house was built a wee bit too high and is now the source of many drainage problems. New Orleans, being a city very sensitive to water and drainage, takes this type of offense Very Seriously. And so do we. (When we bought this house, the inspector and realtor were shocked to learn that it had only settled 7/8 of an inch in a city where 3 inches is average and 6 inches is considered normal. In other words, the foundation was *rock* solid.) Water pooling at the base, as it is now doing due to improper drainage from the construction next door, seriously compromises that. Although we’ve talked ourselves hoarse for several months to the builder over the issue, it was really not addressed to our satisfaction. (Despite the great inconveniences we’ve dealt with over the past 10 months… the not-quite empty beer and paint cans tossed in our recycling, trash in our yard, paint splashed on our brand-new walkway, cement dribbled on our freshly painted fence, repeated use of our water, dust all over everything, early morning disturbances, and on and on…. anyway.) The choice was for *us* pay $100 for gravel to be laid on both sides of the yard. But when the work began this morning, Paul noticed they weren’t grading it properly. So, he decided to nix our take on the gravel and went to work. He moved the sand from our neighbor’s side, leveled it for the gravel, and built up our side, complete with a small wall made out of the bricks we dug up earlier. (The landscaping crew should love Paul for leveling out the other side for him… what a guy.) We’ll put sod down sometime in the future. The bottom line is that it should be great for both houses. Water will have a good two inches of gravel to hang out in and while it will still seep down through into the sand on our side, it won’t flood under our house the way it had been previously. Yee-haw! Go Paul for a job well done! 
Matt and Laura | 09-Aug-05 at 7:22 am | Permalink
Paul is Superman! There’s nothing he can’t do!
Holly | 09-Aug-05 at 7:24 am | Permalink
Yeah, except help me design a Heckman’s Selection to intrepret with my Tobit model. So much for that math degree, eh? 🙂
Cold Spaghetti » Blog Archive » The End of the Levee | 25-Apr-09 at 9:58 pm | Permalink
[…] current project is the next phase in one we begun before Katrina, when the builder next door (Todd Tedesco) built the house roughly a foot and a half above grade […]