One of the issues that Tucsonans have during this time of the year is the North American Monsoon. From roughly July 4 to mid-September (officially June 15 to September 30), short yet intense thunderstorms provide much of Southern Arizona's rain for the year. One can almost set a clock to the summer storms, as they hit nearly every afternoon in the Tucson area. If you have seen any desert southwest photo of a cactus with lightning, odds are that photo was taken during monsoon season. The problem is, they are extremely dangerous, and folks often get trapped in flash floods or lose power due to errant lightning strikes. Therefore, any outdoor work ends up slowing down. That's just how it is. In our previous post, we showed you the progress that we've done painting parts of the patio and guest suite. Ultimately, we needed to finish the backyard exterior doors before they were installed. With the nearly daily rains, properly priming and painting exterior doors is vital. Several of the exterior doors when we bought the house had not been properly primed or repainted, so the doors had rotted. And yes, some were mahogany. Oh well. We thought, since the pool bath door and kitchen door were both part of the patio that we could get away with painting them a different color than the guest suite and master bedroom doors. Nathan was obsessed with this lime green color. I figured it couldn't hurt, since it is just paint. I like the crazy pop of color. Surprisingly, it works.
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If you have been by The Gist Restoration at any point since February, you probably noticed that we have a lot of trees in our yard. Nathan has a background in biology, and grew up in a family that was passionate about growing their own fruit. Nathan only has two rules when it comes to trees - they either have to be native or bear fruit. In the backyard, we have two Rhus Lancea (African sumac) trees that we simply cannot tell if they were originally planted there, or they grew from seeds that dropped in from our neighbor's yard. Although they are drought tolerant, they are extremely messy and have not been properly planted or cared for, and have torn up a good portion of the planters in the northwest side of the yard. We took advantage of some *slightly* cooler morning weather to remove them. Most of the way done. Nathan nearly got heat stroke cutting the two down, despite the fact that he started at 5am. Be careful doing work outside during the summer, folks. You can kind of see how the brick planter (center of photo, left of palm tree) is a mess from the root system. Mostly done. We are looking forward to there not being a ton of Rhus Lancea leaves blowing into the pool.
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About Us
In October 2016, Nathan & Rachel bought a 1958 Tom Gist custom home in the Mid-Century filled Wilshire Heights neighborhood in Tucson, AZ. This is our blog documenting the restoration! Archives
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