Entries by Catherine Mohr

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Wildflowers and permaculture

The wildflowers planted in the meadow and now in a riot of bloom, and it seems like only half of the types have bloomed so far, so we have more colors to go.  The grasses are slowly growing in in between.  I understand from the sources I have read on Native California Grasses, that I […]

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Going native (plants)

Now that the house is in pretty good shape, it is time to start covering all of the bare earth around the house with plants.  When we worked earlier with our landscape architect, Amy Cupples-Rubiano, she had put together a beautiful design with native plants and different climate zones in the yard.  For the open, […]

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Yay for grey!

The grey water system is now up and running!  As was detailed in earlier posts, the house is double plumbed so that water from our bathroom sinks, showers and washing machine all flow out of our grey water sewer pipes for diversion into our grey water system, and the toilet sewage and kitchen sink water […]

Moving day!

This post is a bit backdated to moving day because around the time we were so stressed out, a blog post would have been pretty much incoherent. The house had passed final inspection, and we set a date of Saturday November 13th for moving day which would be after most of the hardscape was done. […]

The Last Push

In late October, we were getting close to being able to get final inspection.  We even dared to start maybe thinking about possibly setting a date to plan to move.  The final finishing touches on plumbing and tile were getting completed in the kitchen and bathrooms, and we were getting the hardscape part of the […]

All about floors

The floors are finally “happening”.  Downstairs, the acid stain went on, and apart from a few areas of less-than-perfect results, the overall effect is exactly what we were looking for. Acid stain is not a paint or a dye, but rather a difficult to predict chemical reaction between the stain and the concrete, and as […]

Well, no acid stain yet

This week was supposed to be the acid stain and concrete sealing week, but a patch on the floor that had been covered with a 2×4 for a while, and which had not lightened to the same color as the rest of the floor was STILL not uniform with the surrounding floor, and that pushed […]

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Greywater plumbing

Thanks to the guys at Garzac plumbing, the grey water system is now plumbed up and connected. Awaiting only a grey water wetlands to start discharging water into (and, of course, a family living in the house producing grey water!) The schematic of the grey water system (Grey water schematic) shows what is going on here, […]