Thanks for the compliments, sean_Buick_76 and miamivice. The garage is being painted now, so hopefully I will have more photos soon. Meanwhile, I am in need of some advice from fellow GJ members. Bear with me as I explain the background...
Remember my fire pit project? Well, it hasn't been going very well. After the footings cured, the concrete subcontractor poured a foundation wall. The idea was to use regular concrete below grade and then pour another concrete wall on top of it with integral color, which is more expensive. Here is the foundation wall:
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Since our lot slopes down toward the fire pit and our neighbor's property, I had talked to my contractor about grading the yard and locating the benches to ensure that we wouldn't be able to see over the fence when sitting at the fire pit.
After they removed the forms, I measured up from the top of the foundation wall (assuming that it was at grade) and, sure enough, the bench would have been located too high. I measured eve level while sitting down at slightly above the top of the fence. Eventually everyone agreed with me, so here was the solution after recalculating grade - cut off the top 1' of foundation wall:
View media item 72096
So the first crisis was averted. It would have been awful to have finished the project only to find out that we were staring at our neighbors every time we used our fire pit. To make sure that this wouldn't be the case, I removed the bottom step from our design, which also reduced the length of the walls:
View media item 72063
Remember my fire pit project? Well, it hasn't been going very well. After the footings cured, the concrete subcontractor poured a foundation wall. The idea was to use regular concrete below grade and then pour another concrete wall on top of it with integral color, which is more expensive. Here is the foundation wall:
View media item 72095
Since our lot slopes down toward the fire pit and our neighbor's property, I had talked to my contractor about grading the yard and locating the benches to ensure that we wouldn't be able to see over the fence when sitting at the fire pit.
After they removed the forms, I measured up from the top of the foundation wall (assuming that it was at grade) and, sure enough, the bench would have been located too high. I measured eve level while sitting down at slightly above the top of the fence. Eventually everyone agreed with me, so here was the solution after recalculating grade - cut off the top 1' of foundation wall:
View media item 72096
So the first crisis was averted. It would have been awful to have finished the project only to find out that we were staring at our neighbors every time we used our fire pit. To make sure that this wouldn't be the case, I removed the bottom step from our design, which also reduced the length of the walls:
View media item 72063
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