Recent Photos
Nice paver work, Steve!
Planter shelf to go b/w two tanks
Dining room porch view 6/13
Master BR tank - 200 gallon capacity
200-gallon bedroom tank and dining tanks 6/13
House Construction Archive
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Rain-Ready & Reaching Out
The summer heat is here, but with the unexpected “cool front” over the weekend (93 degrees) – Steve was able to place some of our water collection tanks. Should be ready to harvest some water for monsoon season, which officially begins June 15. It will be nice to have the tanks filled and waiting for [...] -
Water, Water … Nowhere
On Feb. 5, it looked like the Tasmanian Devil had whirled around the new house, given the freshly dug three-to five-foot deep trenches. But within eight hours, Steve had all the drainage pipes installed, and our backhoe operator, Rocky, had backfilled all the pits. Roof water that isn’t being collected in the local tanks outside the [...] -
Rain Drain, the Alaskan Pipeline and U.S. Customs
If any of you folks outside of Arizona have been watching the news, you’ve seen that we were bombarded with rain in January. Fortunately for us, we got our gutters, scupper boxes and downspouts installed just before the deluge. We didn’t have time to get our ditches dug for drainage pipe before the rain hit, [...] -
Rattlesnakes and Rainbows
Even though we’re taking a short hiatus from construction now that stucco is complete, a lot has happened at the ranch. On November 13, Steve pushed on the kitchen door in the evening so he could get some fresh air, only to find that it was ‘stuck’ on something. I was right behind him, and [...] -
“S’mores” Applied to House
The Dunn Edwards version of the color we chose is called s’mores (and perhaps why I was drawn to it), but the Dryvit color is called burnt oak. No matter what you call it, it is done! Our house no longer sports the ghostly white Tyvek wrap, the striped lath, or the boring gray scratch and [...] -
Stucco and Stain – Part II
Sixty-five windows. Two gallons of stain. Two gallons of Danish oil. Six sanding pads. A box of 100 rubber gloves. Hundreds of screws and hardware. Three tins of paint thinner and lacquer thinner. Two bags o’ rags. Two brushes, two gals, one husband and two professional Pella staining “teachers.” That’s what it took to complete [...] -
Stucco and Stain – Part I
Our first coat of stucco – the scratch coat – was completed Oct. 28, and for the next three days, we sprayed down the house to harden the base coat. On the second day of ‘house watering,’ the interior also saw some action as my mom and I began window staining. Wow … those windows [...] -
Lath Complete
Our house now has some color! Lath (tar paper and chicken-wire) was completed on Oct. 20, and the next step in the stucco process is the scratch-coat. Our giant pile of sand and Western One Kote (scratch coat) awaits! We’re applying stucco in a three-stage process that involves two week’s cure time in between each [...] -
Porch Overhangs Ready! Next Step, Stucco.
Our apologies for the temporary website unavailability. Unfortunately, though, we lost the entire Fry Ranch website, my brand new work website and my old website when our host’s servers were ‘hacked.’ The company then decided to go belly-up the next week, providing NO backups for any of our pages (or refunds!). So Steve has been [...] -
Ummm…. White Castle
Anyone who knows Steve knows that he is in love with White Castle sliders (mini-burgers popular on the East Coast). So – now that the house is wrapped in Tyvek and resembles a white castle due to the angular parapets, his eyes glass over, and he salivates every time he pulls in the driveway, murmuring [...]
