He Said, He Said

I know I left you all hanging on this project a couple of weeks ago, with the threat of a visit from a City Inspector looming overhead.

As should happen, we had a survey done on our property before beginning this work. (Any work of this nature that involves a property line should start this way.) We found a discrepancy between two older surveys over a corner pin placement on the street side, which would pull our property line away from the street at an odd angle.

Since the street in front of the house is actually a Maine state road, a state official came to the site and said we could consider the previous wall "grandfathered" and put the new wall back in it's place. Footers were poured according to this plan, and the mason started laying the foundation course for the wall.

Now, from stage left enters "The Villain"! A city code inspector came to the site and said that the wall could absolutely NOT be outside the property line, even by 4" at one corner. We couldn't quite convince him that we weren't encroaching on city property, since it's a state road, and it was one of those battles just not worth fighting.

So...from the center point of the wall, (which will be a walkway and steps ultimately), one side of the wall had to be angled slightly toward the house. Not a huge problem, and once all is complete you will never know. But the kind of situation that sends you back to the drawing board to find solutions, since one change often has consequences that drift down to other aspects of the design.
Back fill and a French drain go in as soon as the base wall is in to hold back the road and help channel the rain water. A final layer of loam went in on top of the crushed rock, for eventual planting on the street side.

This was the state of the project when I left, about five weeks ago. We've had a couple of pictures from the contractor in the mean time, but we are very anxious to see the finished (or nearly finished) project when we are there over Memorial weekend. More pictures to follow!