Remodeling: It's Starting to Look Like Something!

At least Nullah seems to be looking at something.

We have been working (by"we", I mean Tim) on the backyard fountain for what seems to be years now....really only one year....and it is finally starting to be a place where we can sit and enjoy the sound of water skipping down the wall and see water lilies and gold fish. (I am pretty sure that is what is holding Nullah's attention.)

Some of you may remember the progress of building our fountain in blog posts, here, here and here. Here is a little recap.....

This was our backyard a couple of years ago during the construction phase of the house remodel.

We already had a large concrete block wall between our neighbor's house and ours. There was a carport attached to it which we had torn down when we built our garage. We decided to leave the wall there after much discussion about whether to tear it down. We came up with a plan to do a water feature on the wall with a water trough at the bottom and cover the rest of the wall with Boston Ivy. This photo was taken before Tim started building the trough, and after we had a concrete pad poured. (Someday we plan to cover the pad with blue stone). You can see the wavy water line Tim drew on the wall, he he....

Tim built the trough and capped the wall and trough with concrete trim pieces and had the wall stuccoed to match the house....

We left a space between the trough and the concrete pad so we could plant in the remaining strip....

Next, we decided to clad the space where water would cascade down the wall in metal plates. Tim painted a fertilizer and water solution on the metal plates (which he had cut into a rectangular shape) so that they would get a rusty patina. He had to waterproof the wall before screwing the plates to the wall in a running bond pattern....

Tim put up the plates a bit at a time making sure everything was level. He had measured and remeasured everything ahead of time to make sure we would have whole plates from top to bottom. Half width plates were cut for the ends of every other run....

There was much filling and emptying of the trough to make sure everything was watertight. Tim used PVC pipe to run the water up by pump to the top of the wall and across the top. Small holes were drilled across the length of pipe across the top to create a continuous stream that falls down the metal plates. We let the water cause more rust on the metal plates until we had the color we wanted. We then coated the wall with a finish coat to stop further rusting. We had to run water through the system for awhile to get rid of any residue in the water. Tim put metal u-channel pieces around the perimeter of the water wall to hide the PVC pipe. We are letting this trim rust naturally over time.

Now for the fun part!

We added water plants: white Water Lilies and Variegated Water Iris (light blue) which we got from a grower that sells water plants at our local Farmer's Market. This wall gets direct sun for most of the day, so Tim planted a variety of succulents in the strip in front of the trough wall and Tulip Magnolias on either side. We have started Boston Ivy growing to cover the stucco part of the wall the which will take awhile to get established.....