Elizabeth Weintraub • Sacramento Short Sale Agent • Land Park

I haven't yet decided if I will put the flower pots back on the deck because I've sort of come to like them on the cement sidewalk and, besides, there is a pathway between the pots and the deck. You know how it is when you water plants, right? Water drains out the bottom, and even with little feet under each plant -- which we have -- water runs down the deck. Over time, it can cause cracks in the cement. Still, this Land Park deck in Sacramento is ready for entertaining.

My husband hasn't noticed it yet. It was dark when he came home and after my bedtime anyway. :) Below is a side-by-side comparison:               

The color, in case you are wondering, is a Rustoleum Navy Blue, matched in a Behr deck and patio paint. It is the same color that I painted the back-yard cedar deck and lattice work around the spa. I realize not everybody would paint their decks or patios navy blue, but I like it. What do you think?

My husband headed out of town last Thursday. As I watched his car pull away, it dawned on me. Shoot. I have been so busy working that I forgot to line up a home improvement project. He never knows when he leaves what he'll find when he comes back to our Land Park home except that I will have undertaken something new and different. I do this to spare him the inconvenience. That's because all home improvement projects involve some type of lifestyle compromise, even if it's something as simple as, "Hey, I can't use the back door for a while."

I made an emergency phone call to my painters, Fresh Paint.

The top photo shows my cleared off deck prior to paint, and the bottom is the first coat. I hired professional painters because I don't have the time to do this myself. Christine, above, was one of the painters who did my kitchen. First, she power washed the deck, scraped off peeling paint and power washed the brick landing (which is remaining unpainted). It was looking all fresh and sparkly!

The problem, however, was the wind. Christine completed the first coat Friday morning and planned to come back later in the day to finish up. Except by 2 PM, the winds were blowing so hard that those little helicopter seeds were flying off trees, along with leaves and dust, and landing on my deck. I asked the painter to come back Saturday morning instead and was lucky the painters were able to accommodate that request. Otherwise, this job would not get finished before my husband returns.

How do you like the color? It's the same color that I painted the wood deck and Jacuzzi lattice. I realize some people really like Seattle red in landscaping and yards, but it seems dated to me. (update tomorrow)

Photos: Elizabeth Weintraub

Day three, and the driveway is finished. What do you think about that chain-link gate? I'm thinking ornamental ironwork, an electronic gate that swings open, might be a good solution. It's not that I really need a gate, because we don't have a dog, but without it, I can't really enclose the back yard and keep out the wildlife -- all those wild moose and donkeys in Land Park, you know.

My neighbor seemed disgruntled that he was required to turn off his sprinklers for a day. His sprinklers should not be spraying my property anyway, but I never complain about it to him. Maybe I just caught him at a bad time. He sort of growled and said, "Yeah, but I'm turning them back on in a day."

This is the view from the garage, looking toward the street. The grading turned out well. It appears to slope away from the house and toward the fence, then it slopes down to the street. I ran out this morning to look for cat, raccoon or skunk prints in the cement; we seem to have been spared the late night traffic through the yard.

One night I was awakened by the sound of screeching in the back yard. I dashed outside and saw two critters chasing each other around in circles. Raccoons! So, I turned on the garden hose and sprayed them to break up the fight. Possums, raccoons, skunks, you name it, they slink around homes in Land Park every night. Once I saw a possum running along the telephone wires. I thought, whoa, that squirrel has a skinny little tail.

And here is my final obligatory cat photo. This is Pica, a marbled ocicat. He's a chocolate silver who was supposed to have spots but turned out marbled instead. The breeder couldn't show him because he had no spots, so I adopted him. He weighs 16 pounds and is six years old. His fur feels like velvet. Pica is our sweetest cat. Kids can pick him up and haul him around, and he never complains or tries to squirm away.

Photos: Elizabeth Weintraub

The cement crew finished up half the driveway last night. The tool you see this guy using is called a joiner. It has a slot in the center that grooves the cement while the top of the tool smooths the joint. We discovered a clean-out for the sewer line below the former brick patio, which is why you see a hole. They placed a bucket shaped object over the clean-out to protect it and will put a grate on top when it is finished. It's a good thing I asked them to investigate what I thought was a French drain.

You can see the grate cover in this photo. The cement is still wet. You can also see my beautiful tankless water heater (it's got a red symbol on it for Rheem), just in case you were wondering what a tankless water heater looks like. I'm going to paint the back deck blue to match the other deck and gazebo for the jacuzzi. I don't really like red surfaces. Blue is much more calming.

I shot this photo at 10:30 this morning, which is why the light has shadows. This is the long stretch of the driveway. The guy is smoothing out the edges. One of the handy aspects of using a contractor my neighbor recommended is if the crew messed up his sprinkler heads, which run along that edge of the driveway, my neighbor knows who to call. :)

Here you can see the entire run of the driveway, back to the garage. They are still cutting in the grooves and smoothing out the cement. It has not yet been broom brushed. It's such a pretty color wet, don't you think? When it dries, it will be white. One of my other neighbors painted her driveway gray. It looks nice, for about six months. It now needs repainting. Why she didn't ask for the cement to be colored is beyond me. For me, though, plain o' white cement is just fine.

All the homes in Land Park on my street were built between 1948 and 1950. Everybody has hardwood floors. The neighborhood was once a tract of two-bedroom, one-bath homes, but over the years, almost everyone has added a couple extra bedrooms and another bath. A few built a second-floor addition, but none of those are next door to me, thank goodness.

Obligatory cat photo. This is Brandon. He's a Somali and turned 17 in July. He spends most of his time in a pen in my family room because he has kidney disease. He was so happy to sit in a chair outside that he spent a good 30 minutes rubbing on it. Sometimes, I let him sit outside in the sun when I'm around to supervise. He has arthritis, too, so it's not like he's able to run off anywhere.

I'll post more photos tomorrow when the driveway job is completed.

Photos: Elizabeth Weintraub

Hey everybody, it's home improvement time again. It has been almost two months since I've tackled a project around the house, you know. All the homes in Land Park on my street have new driveways. Mine was beginning to look like an eyesore, cracking and heaving. Plus, we had a brick patio against the house (where we keep our trash can and recycling can), which would pool with water every time it rained. It made sense to pour new cement over the entire area and grade it away from the house.

My driveway is longer than those you'll find in Land Park. That's because my home sits on a curve in the street, and I have five neighbors. The lot size is about a quarter of an acre, which is large by Land Park standards. You can see in the lower left-hand corner an exposed sprinkler head. That's because I warned the bulldozer guys not to run over it, but they did. So, they had to fix it. You can anticipate problems but people don't always pay attention when you tell them what might happen. They pay attention, though, when they mess up.

The crew removed everything up to my back deck, including the steps. The framed box you see at the bottom is my new step. It will be curved, to follow the curve of my deck.

Since the truck couldn't fit down my driveway -- or maybe they were afraid they would run into my house, hard to say -- the guys are hand rolling wheelbarrows full of cement to pour into the newly graded areas. I'm thinking I should buy a new gate, too. You can see one of the gates open against the fence. It's a chain-link gate. I'd like a wrought iron gate that opens automatically. My husband says if we did that, it's just one more thing that can malfunction. I will have to work on him.

One of the reasons we never got around to doing a new driveway was because we had 40-foot birch trees where the cactus garden is now located. Those trees sent roots under the driveway and forced the cement to heave. If we had replaced the driveway, the same thing would have happened again, eventually, and I didn't want to damage the tree roots by shaving them. Of course, last January's storm in Sacramento took care of the birch trees, and they are now gone.

After they poured the cement, the guys used this big stamper that sort of looked like a huge potato masher to squash the cement. Another guy, you can see him on the right, is picking up handfuls of cement and throwing it into the mixture to pound it down, while another rakes and two others push that 2 x 4 (it's a screed) to level it out.

Then the boss man gets the fun job of walking through the cement in rubber boots and smoothing out the top. The crew will pour half the driveway today and finish the other half tomorrow, finishing it, I imagine, with a broom. This is a good time of the year to do a driveway. Construction costs are way down because there's little work for many contractors, and it's at least a month before it will rain.

Here is Pia, wondering what all that noise and commotion is about outside. (*Obligatory cat photo) Have you noticed that my photographs improved about halfway through this series? That's because I bought a new camera, a Nikon digital, and decided to try it out. It's a world of difference in quality from my old Kodak. I have no idea what all the buttons will do because I've never used a real camera. I'm used to those point and shoot cameras. But at least I have figured out how to turn it on, snap a photo and upload it. That's half the battle, I guess.

More tomorrow!