Monday, August 04, 2008

My Summer Projects

I have taken pictures while doing a series of projects over the last two months, and put them into an album on PicasaWeb, with captions. The link below goes to this album.

After we had new siding put on the house, it became apparent that the fiberglass wall on the west side of the house looked bad by comparison. But we liked the fact that the fiberglass, which is translucent, lets light into the shop/storage area, which has no windows. So we decided to hide the fiberglass wall with a trellis, and hide the air conditioner as well.

We had a string of potted herbs and flowers along that wall, and I had been thinking of making a raised bed for planting herbs. Over the last two years, I have been developing soil from compost for this raised bed, in another area. So we decided to put a raised bed for herbs and flowers below and in front of the trellis. We could also plant clematis in the bed to climb on the trellis.

The raised bed would require that the walkway of stones (small stones and round stepping stones) would need to be moved further away from the house. Over the years, debris falling on the stones has turned into soil, making it difficult to stop weeds from growing. So we might as well sift out the soil and wash the stones while moving them. Around the corner (south), the dirty stone problem was even worse, due to a bird feeder at the back of the house. So the stone cleaning operation would include that area, also. The soil from the stones could also be used for the raised bed.

We also have had a problem with grass along-side the stones growing in among the stones, causing the stone/grass boundary to migrate. So we would also add plastic edging (mostly underground wall) at the stone/grass boundary to prevent the migration.

When making a list of the required lumber for the raised bed and the frame to support the trellis, I realized that I would need to rent a truck to transport the lumber. I also wanted to build two shelf units to better organize the shop/storage area, so I added the lumber for the shelves to the list to save an extra truck rental.

So the trellis idea led to the raised bed, which led to stone cleaning; and the trellis and raised bed led to getting started on the storage shelves. I made detailed measurements and plans for all these projects, but absolutely no schedule. But once I got started, I wanted to keep going as much as possible.

Yes, I'm retired. But retirement isn't doing nothing. It's having no schedule.

Summer Projects Photo Album

1 comment:

Stan said...

Hey, Jim. You've got a little project there with the stones! Good luck!