A week ago I began to think that we were not going to make it and we would either have to stick to our "no projects after Memorial Day" and suffer through the summer with unfinished things staring us in the face (something I'm not sure I could handle) or spill over into the summer doing projects. Either way was going to be a disappointment.
So, while A was at work, I put on my tool belt and tackled what I could!
I'm still not entirely confident with construction projects but I figured that I could handle building one of the sets of stairs from the patio to the living room since we had bought the perfect height pre-cut stair stringers. (Honestly... calculating the rise and run to cut these things myself would have taken days and several board feet of wasted lumber before I got it right - pre-cut is the way to go!) I had built a set of exterior stairs on our VT house but in truth had not done an excellent job of footing them. The house was being sold and I rushed it so instead of pouring a concrete footing or slab, I used large flat rocks. I have no idea if they settled or not as the house sold within a few weeks of building them.
This time I had the patio as the footing so I knew that wasn't an issue. But the patio has a rise and run of its own for drainage so I was hoping my stairs wouldn't end up sloping away. They didn't. Any appearance that they do is actually an optical illusion (thank goodness!).
Once I rounded up all of the necessary tools, screws etc, it didn't take long to at last have three 47" wide steps leading down from the living room to the patio!
I also tackled customizing our gate. Several months ago we built a gate on the other side of the house with waves at the top and marbles drilled into it. I wanted a matching wave gate for the side entry onto the patio so I headed to the workshop again and dug out the handheld jig saw and the power sander. I had already assembled the gate the week before under the helpful eye of my husband (to guide me) so it was just a matter of drawing the pattern on the top edge of the gate, cutting it and re-staining it. Voila! Done!
I also stained the living room door before getting started on preparing the 19 panels of stockade for installation.
We had the bright idea that setting all of the panels flat on the yard would make it "easy" to just roll on the stain. Seven hours, six gallons of stain, four roller pads, one fiberglass sliver and two aching shoulders, and 19 front side only panels later, I was done. It was grueling! We only did the front side as they face the neighbor's yard and he's got three huge mastiffs that I don't need to help me while staining a fence so we did it pre-installation.
A and I both took Monday off so we could build the fence in one shot. With our two dogs and their three dogs, containment was an issue. We rented a power post hole digger ($55/day) which is worth it at twice the price! We got going early as I was supposed to leave for a meeting at 1pm but thankfully that was cancelled and we pushed through with the help of our neighbor and got it all done by about 2:30pm. Phew! Now we just need to stain our side of it...
I had also taken Tuesday off thinking we might need two days to complete the fence. A had to work so I spent the day cleaning up the debris of the old fence. One trip to the transfer station with the pressure treated wood, dozens of trips to the burn pile with everything burnable, organizing of reusable lumber (I have plans to build a potting table, an outdoor bar/serving table, and some shelves with the salvageable old fence material), and general tidying of the yard is how I spent the day... Then A came home and built the second set of stairs from the patio to the new French doors leading into the kitchen while I cooked dinner and melted into a chair watching him. (I was exhausted!)
These were the major construction projects needing to get done and with them complete, I can now see the possibility of completing almost everything by our target date. Of course we made an overly ambitious list so there are smaller things on there that we'd LIKE to do now but are really more realistic for the fall... But that's okay.
And now it's been raining for days so we haven't even sat out and enjoyed the patio! We scarfed down quick dinners out there mostly because we were too dirty to be inside but the evening of dinner by the fire pit is yet to come. Soon!
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