Rear porch and steps will be exposed aggregate.

Today the carpenter built the columns around the rusted pipe supports at the front porch. The mason started constructing the retaining walls at the rear of the house.

We found a surprise while digging footers for the back steps - another cistern! This one was much bigger than the front yard cistern. We ended up filling it with brick and concrete from the old steps

We took a trip to the local salvage yard to get doors for the basement. The carpenter also made progress on the basement steps and entry porch bead board.

Today the plumbers arrived to install the new water line and sewer back flow preventer. The mason also finished up replacing the tar stained bricks on the back corners of the house.

New custom front door arrived and was installed today. Looked great, but was 4" too short. A new door has been ordered.

Rear porch was removed to make way for new porch and steps.

They finished demo on the retaining wall today. Unfortunately, there were not enough salvageable brick to reuse. Looks like we're back to finding a brick match...

Work continued on regrading the back yard. They had to bring in serveral tri-axle loads for top soil. The front porch bead board started to go up. On the inside the bead board around the banquette continued. In the upstairs bathroom we decided to strip the drawers and door (middle pic on second row) to prepare for repainting 2 done, 4 to go.