Posts Tagged ‘contractor’
Drying Out
Ground moisture has changed dramatically in the last 36 hours, which bodes well for my planned post-burying project scheduled for next week. The current 10-day forecast continues to show nothing but sunshine until next Thursday, the day after we intend to auger post holes. Color me eager to get that next milestone accomplished.
I had a little episode yesterday that felt like my brain might be drying out because I couldn’t find two things in the barn that I knew had to be there somewhere. After much searching for my tape measure and one of the 6” turnbuckles, I gave up and moved on with an effort to tighten the snugness of the shade sail hanging inside the barn. While moving a ladder from a rarely visited corner, I spotted the turnbuckle hanging on a hook near where I had been making adjustments a week ago.
A few minutes after that, something clicked in my brain, and I realized I had left the tape measure in the hay shed when I was cutting wood blocks for the posts. I guess it’s good to recognize that there is nobody else to blame for my missing things, but I’m a little sour about the evidence of gaps in my memory about them.
Is it possible the dry conditions are putting a bend in one of the posts waiting to be raised for the shade sail?
I noticed the bend going sideways yesterday, so I turned the post to see if gravity would make any difference in the amount of curve. If the bend remains, I figure we can use it to our advantage against the pull of tightening the sail if we install it just right.
The trickiest part of this installation for me is definitely going to be achieving the proper dimensions, which is why I contracted a professional for assistance. Well, that and the operation of a power auger to drill holes as deep as I want them. Oh, and whatever the mechanism is to get header boards attached at an angle 8-to-10 feet overhead.
We are getting closer every day to the point where I want to put up temporary barriers to block the horse’s access to the space where we will be working. It’s a balance of trying to minimize the disruption to their environment, but give me adequate time to do as much preparation work as possible before next Wednesday. I don’t know what the ideal number of days is. I’ve been going through the steps I think will be involved in my mind repeatedly, but that has yet to help me definitively decide when to start.
At this point, I figure I’ve thought about it enough that the horses already know exactly what is about to happen, so I probably don’t need to worry about them at all. I expect they just want me to get on with it, give them the shade, and be done with the whole project.
If that is true, then it just shows we are of like minds. I would like to be done with it, too.
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Everything Arrived
Thursday started with a morning delivery of the lumber I ordered for my shade sail project. The truck stopped on the road, and the driver used a three-wheeled forklift to move my posts and boards up the driveway.
Having never done anything like this before, I’m uncertain about a lot of the details. I’m feeling confident about the overall concept, and I have purchased everything I think I will need, but I’m haunted about how it will all work out in the end.
I have decided to install a header around the top of the posts to bolster the stability of the whole frame against the pull of the canopy hardware and the pushing guaranteed to happen from 1200-pound horses with an itch. Watching how the 24-foot-long 2 x 6 boards flopped like noodles, it occurred to me that those probably should have been a beefier dimension.
I’m not used to dealing with such long dimensions in lumber, or anything else, for that matter. It’s hard for me to visualize where 24 feet of something will fit. Even the forklift driver needed to make some tricky adjustments to barely fit between the hay shed and the wood fence with the boards balanced on the forks. There was a little squeaking as the boards rubbed against the metal shed as he eked his way through.
By noon, FedEx had delivered a box with the shade sail canopy on our front steps. Cyndie and I tried to unfold it in the loft, letting it drape over the railing to get a feel for the size. I didn’t realize how big 18 feet is. It doesn’t seem like that much out in the paddock, but in the house, we couldn’t find space to stretch it out.
I opted for the barn.
It took me several tries to rig up attachment points that worked, but we eventually got it stretched out enough to take up slack in the metal cable sewn into the outer edge all the way around.
There was no way we could have done this outside yesterday with gale-force wind gusts howling all afternoon, leading up to a robust thunderstorm just before sunset.
I’m aware that maximum tension is the key to getting the shade sail to perform optimally, but my initial rigging in the barn showed me there are a few little details to achieving my goal that make this project a lot more complicated than it seems like it should be at the start.
My new contractor friend, Justin, will stop by today to take exact measurements to determine where we will place the posts.
We are getting close to finding out how much the horses are going to freak out over the strange new feature appearing in their midst. So far, the flapping labels on the lumber outside their paddock kept them on edge for much of yesterday before I pulled everything off the wood.
If only they knew what was going to happen next.
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Relative Something 