Starting The Hanging Gardens - A de-I/Wife Construction Adventure

It's almost been 3 months!  3 months without any construction going on.  What kind of way is that to transition into one's golden years, one's post work life?  No one must build, build, build.  Bigger and grander, right?  Oh wait a minute...hmmm....oh this says that most folks my age are...What! Downsizing?????   Going into smaller less grandiose homes?????  Never mind.  I'm not going to pay any attention to that propaganda.  It's probably all a neo-conservative, uber-liberal, Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street plot to keep me from making de-I Tower THE most spectacular house in the city.

Any way, diatribe aside, yes we are onto another project - the redoing of our backyard.  Actually this has been in Wife's sights for a long time as we have a lovely setting but it is really, really showing its age.

BEFORE

From a distance the yard really does look nice

But when you get close you see things are really starting to deteriorate

The railroad tie retaining walls are nearly collapsing

The wood on the deck and the stairs going up is warped and falling apart

When we put in our first improvement, a brick patio, we got a bad batch of bricks which have disintegrated

DECONSTRUCTION

Always the first step of the project

With the WWI anniversary it kind of looks like the trenches of no man's land

Bricks all gone