Exterior Grading for Water Removal

After completing the exterior wall stucco and removing all the scaffolding, the next step was to properly grade the landscape around the building for efficient removal of water, away from the structure and from the North side (slightly higher elevation - right side of photo below) around the structure to the South side (slightly lower elevation - left side of photo below). 

The yellow arrows in the photo below show the direction of water flow.  A local backhoe operator was hired along with some additional shovel work to accomplish the task.

The photo below is the East side of the building (South looking North). Since the building was situated in a hillside, the North side of the building is exposed to the slope of that hillside.  The next phase of this project will be to construct a stone stem wall to buttress the exposed slope and protect the building from sediment runoff toward the building during the summer monsoon season.