Address

1349 Gunbarrel Road, Chattanooga, Tennessee 37421

Friday, January 27, 2017

Almost ready!!

Driveway about to be started. Backfill almost complete. Landscaping started (azalea garden on right out side of the Azalea Room).  Privacy fence (at right back) We're getting there.

We’re down to the final stretch of the three+ year trek since we decided to construct St Francis Cottage, and our excitement builds with each new day.  Although there are final interior details to be dealt with and the driveway and final landscaping are not yet installed, there has been good progress these past weeks.  

John (in purple shirt) with survey crew marking contours for the detention pond.

John (in skid steer on left), Charlie (holding survey maker), and John's brother (in the track hoe) shaping the bond.  These gentlemen are artists with very large tools.

More earth artistry.  You can tell we live very close to Georgia!

Reshaping the contours of the backyard. We will have stairs when you come visit, we promise.

Thanks to John Cantrell and his precise skills, talent and amazing work ethic, the retention pond has been dug and seeded, and the drainage facilities are now installed.  Although digging the vast pond was no easy task, John knocked it out in less than a week and often arrived at sun-up to begin his long workday.

Having already constructed a 100-foot fence in the front, Wallace ambitiously marked a 120-foot line along our west property line to create more privacy for our event space, gardens and rear deck.  He took off to Lowe’s to pick up the building materials, and we both started digging 17 two-foot deep holes with our trusted post-hole diggers.   




Wallace sunk the posts in concrete and installed the cross-bars, and then we went to town as a team hanging and nailing the fence posts.  We finished just in time as the sun set and it began to rain.  Although we were a little sore the following morning, both of us hands-down prefer working on a DIY project and maintaining our farm and gardens over working out in a gym.




For those of you who are landscapers, we wanted to assure you that we don't just have red clay.  We have "banked" all the top soil around the area, ready to re-spread it once all the contours have been achieved.




Also, here's another small peek at what's to come with the interior of the building.  We found this bell shaped chandelier for the stairwell.  Thought it was a nice match to our arches throughout the building.

New chandelier in stairwell.  The current plan is that the handrail will eventually match the hardwood.

We will be announcing the opening date for the Cottage very soon!!

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