Posts Tagged ‘DIY’
Days Long
Once again, we find ourselves engaged in a project that is much larger than two people can complete in a short amount of time. Cyndie and I could work on the newly graded dirt along our driveway from sun up to sun down if our sore feet and blistering hands were equal to the task and it would still take many days.
Since the project isn’t truly completed until there is grass growing in all this new clay/dirt combination, it will be months if not a year to reach the ultimate goal. Luckily, getting beyond this first raking and grading effort will be a welcome milestone. We’ll no longer feel driven to work intensively at every possible moment.
As always, it is a labor of love. It looks so much better already and will be a great improvement for mowing and plowing along the driveway. I’m looking forward to doing both on the improved slopes.
To accommodate allowing Asher to loiter off-leash, Cyndie and I split up and she stayed with him to work out-of-sight from the road and I took a second wheelbarrow down to the road to rake, shovel, and scrape.
Removing the large chunks of clay and the occasional big rocks leaves the task of heavy raking to pull dirt up from the bottom and smooth out the slope as evenly as possible. I find the result highly visually rewarding.
It actually inspires me to want to get right back out there to pick up where I left off except for the one-sided toll it takes on my body. I can’t master the art of raking left-handed. Hours of pulling only one way creates a stress on my body that is decidedly lopsided.
Maybe I’ll do some mowing today on the zero-turn mower. I need to steer that with both hands equally.
It’s another labor of love, don’t you know.
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Clay Chunks
For a change of pace after breakfast yesterday, I went for a bike ride to check the status of a route I’ve invited friends to join me on in a couple of weeks. The roads are all still there. Crops in the fields are starting to yellow but very few trees were sporting the colors of fall.
I am curious what the scenery will look like in two weeks.
After lunch, it was back to landscaping and increasing the calluses on my hands. The dirt the contractor hauled in for the job matches our soil pretty well for the percentage of clay it contains. With the bucket and tracks of the skid steer, the guy could press that dirt to a cement-like density.
In one area where we want water to flow to a culvert, he filled it too much and I needed to dig some out.
That proved to be a lot harder to accomplish than I expected. Asher volunteered to help and for once he was digging exactly where I wanted him to.
I found a good use for the large chunks of clay that didn’t get broken up by the skid steer. I’m dumping them on the slope beyond the shop garage to create a base where I want to reclaim it as easily driveable off the edge of the pavement.
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After the driveway was repaved, that slope had become too steep, just like the edges along the rest of the length. Here, I want to add enough fill to make that spot easy to drive over with the mower of ATV. By busting up the chunks of clay I will get a solid base to cover with composted manure and old hay before finishing it with some of our remaining lime screenings.
Since we only had the contractor work up to the barn area, any improvements between there and the house are up to us. I will be improving this area simultaneously with the rest of the length where we are finishing the work the contractor did.
This includes shopping for a water tank and sprayer we can pull behind the lawn tractor or ATV to water grass seed.
Gives us something to do around here.
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Double Adventures
There was no great plan for my day when I woke up yesterday but I was pondering the possibility of a bike ride on the roads around our lake place. On a whim, I checked the “Ride with GPS” app on my phone and noticed it showed options for paved routes and one caught my interest for being a nice change of pace from my regular riding routine.
I headed north toward Seeley and was rewarded with a fabulous adventure of a ride.
I thought about pausing at the Sawmill Saloon in Seeley for lunch but since I had forgotten my wallet, I decided to ride on toward the Double-Oh (OO) trailhead where the American Birkebeiner ski race trail crosses over the road where I could eat the mixed nuts and homemade gingersnap cookies snack I brought with me.
Little did I know that I would show up at a time on a day when I would get to meet the president of the Birchleggings Club, Paul Thompson, preparing for a presentation of a new electric snowmobile donation to the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation. The Birchleggings Club is a non-profit organization and close partner of ABSF, whose members have skied 20 or more American Birkebeiners.
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Paul has skied 42 Birkies! I have skied zero but shared several of my crazy adventure stories as a spectator, including the time my friend Paul Keiski got me a press pass granting us special access for taking pictures. That year we sat in front of one of the finishing booths where we witnessed a wild sprint between two world-class racers from Scandinavia.
Even though I could have lingered to enjoy the Birkie people and activities for the rest of the day, I had a bike ride to finish. The roads I picked were smooth pavement through some fabulous forest that offered a very rewarding finish to the 32-mile loop ending right back at our driveway.
After I hopped off my bike, I wanted to stretch my legs a bit which brought me to the Whitlock’s place next door where I knew a project was underway. Before I had even changed out of my biking shoes, I suddenly found myself engaged in the second adventure of my day.
The Whitlocks are installing a replacement hot tub this weekend. Another set of hands was a welcome sight at a time when boards kept shifting as new ones were tapped into place.
After the first “fit” was accomplished, it all needed to come apart and three beads of caulk were applied to each board for the final assembly. Getting the last two boards to ‘pop’ into place in order to get the metal straps attached was something of an art that required a number of trial-and-error go-rounds.
The straps were secured just in time for a dinner break, leaving plenty of finishing work to be accomplished yet today. I remain on call for assistance as needed.
Yesterday was one of those when I had no idea how much adventure awaited me when I decided to head out alone on a little bike ride. It ended up being more than doubly rewarding!
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Got View
Despite a day-long spitting snowfall making work a challenge of really cold hands, the camera is up and running and I now have a live view available on my phone or our computers.
[mic drop]
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Making Progress
Phase one of my surveillance camera installation was accomplished yesterday. I made the drive to Hudson for parts and successfully guessed what I needed and what I already had at home to add a switch and duplex outlet to the existing light fixture over the shop door.
That went well enough to inspire me to consider the possibility of adding an outlet to the base of our spiral staircase in the house by drilling a hole in the floor and feeding wires up from the basement. Our recent rearrangement of furniture in the living area highlighted that our old solution of an extension cord from the wall by the fireplace was not the best plan.
I’m surprised they didn’t think of putting an outlet beneath the stairs when the house was built.
Alas, that idea will have time to mature before I pursue it because I still need to finish what I already started and get the camera mounted at the shop. If I can keep up the momentum, maybe the camera installation can be completed today and I can cross it off the to-do list.
There are plenty of things competing for my attention that enable my aptitude for letting projects dangle unfinished.
I’m not feeling confident in the accuracy of the forecasts for snow that have been getting broadcast throughout the previous week. I’m expecting we’ll see snow but I question how big of a plowing and shoveling effort will be required and which day will get consumed by the work.
If we get less than 6 inches it won’t be a big deal. If more than that falls, I need to make some passes with the ATV in the middle of the accumulation in addition to after the storm has passed. I’ve seen this expected event described as a “long duration” (multiple days) snowfall.
Plowing and shoveling become the wildcard demand for my time and attention. After each “plowable” snowfall, everything else on the to-do list moves down a notch.
That’s sort of moving projects’ progress in a negative direction.
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Helping Ourselves
We asked for help in finishing the landscaping along the steep edges of our new driveway. I’m taking the lack of response from our excavator to indicate they are either too busy or simply not interested. They must not need our money.
It is a peeve of mine when contractors choose to “ghost” potential customers after initial contact. I generally follow the idiom of squeaky wheels getting the grease but after multiple unsuccessful attempts to communicate our genuine interest in paying for help with our landscaping, we have fallen back on doing what we can with our limited resources.
Up by the shop/garage, I have been feathering the edge with composted manure. Yesterday, we mined a ten-year-old pile of dirt down by our southern border drainage ditch to use at the bottom of the driveway by the road, filling the trailer behind the ATV with hand shovels. We made six trips back and forth and covered a humblingly short length of both sides.
Cyndie suggested we rent a skid steer tractor. She’s not wrong that it would be a more impressive machine for addressing this size of a job. My first hesitation with that plan is that I would be the person to operate it and I’ve never driven one before. The subsequent issues include our lack of truck or trailer to transport the machine, the small amount of available dirt a machine like that could move, and the abuse my novice use would do to the surrounding terrain.
We don’t make a lot of efficient progress with our shovel-fulls at a time, but I have the skills to operate a shovel and can do the work with minimal collateral damage.
The only real challenge beyond not being able to finish the job quickly is coping with my self-conscious embarrassment about the neighbors’ opinions over our using hand tools to tackle work that deserves machines. Working down at the road leaves our methods glaringly obvious to local traffic passing by.
My slow and primitive methods are less obvious up on the other end of the driveway. I’m not certain our efforts will ultimately produce the desired results but Cyndie and I agree what we can do ourselves will be better than nothing. Time will tell.
Having successfully made that small bit of progress near the road yesterday, I’d like to keep going while the weather allows until we use up the rest of the old pile. It’s a good exercise in coping with my apprehension over the impressions my methods give to local observers.
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Interrelated Accomplishments
One thing conveniently led to the next in the series of projects we chose to take on in yesterday’s unseasonable heat. While we had been working in the woods the day before, Cyndie discovered a spot that looked promising for digging up more rocks for use in the labyrinth. There remained a surprising number of plaster fake rocks defining the pathway that we have always intended to replace when we find suitable real rocks.
I can no longer recall how many of these faux stones were left behind by the sellers of our property because it’s been so long since we used them all up in the labyrinth. Since we started reclaiming them again and storing them on a pallet, we’ve reached roughly five layers of the plaster half-rocks now being stored in the hay shed. That is more than enough to keep in reserve for replacing ones that fall from the veneer of supposed field rock plastered around the foundation of our log home and the shop garage.
Yesterday’s rock exchange in the labyrinth resulted in a wheelbarrow full of the faux stones which I needed to purge. Convincing myself that we didn’t need to store any more fake rocks, I came up with a good use for them. I dumped them on the corner where our loop around the hay shed meets the new pavement of the driveway.
I have been working to build up the corner to support the lagging trailer wheels that follow off-track in a turn onto the narrow driveway. After adding rock to the shoulder of that corner, I have been covering it with composted manure, our most available natural fill.
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Our great need for fill along the driveway is conveniently coinciding with my goal of clearing out space in the compost area to make room for the coming winter.
So, to review:
- We replaced faux stones that were temporarily used in the labyrinth.
- I was able to use the faux stones as fill for building up the turn from the hay shed loop to the driveway pavement.
- I’m using composted manure to cover the added material along that turn.
- Using that compost helps to clear out space for winter collection of new manure and possibly bedding from the barn stalls.
It is wonderfully satisfying to be making these improvements and having our efforts pay off in advancing other projects concurrently underway. It feels like we are getting two rewards for one effort, multiple times!
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Added Steps
This morning’s frost was cold enough to create a cover of ice over the horse’s waterer, affirming our suspicion the automatic heaters are no longer up to the task they performed so well in the early years. We have hopes of remedying that before the daytime temperatures no longer climb above freezing this fall.
There was enough frost on the grass this morning that I “skated” along after we popped out of the woods on our way to feed the horses.
At first, we worried that Mix might be suffering some medical issue because her behavior of pawing the ground, snorting, rising up, chasing after others, and kicking seemed to indicate she was in pain. When she settled down enough for feed pans to be served, calm chewing replaced the wild behavior.
I suggested to Cyndie that Mix might have just been trying to rev up her engine in response to the cold morning. While they were all eating, the sun cleared the horizon and instantly began to warm surfaces. The horses all stand sideways to the warming beam, soaking it up as they gobble up their feed.
My projects yesterday included the addition of steps on a path from the driveway that had gotten even steeper than it already was before the resurfacing increased the height of the pavement. Over the last week, we’ve collected a spare wood beam and some rocks for the task.
There weren’t a lot of fill options handy so I attempted to sculpt something minimal and then scrounged the surrounding area for shovel-able dirt.
What I found was so fine it couldn’t be called sand. It was more like dust. On the edge of the woods, a tree had tipped years ago and this was the “soil” around the root bundle that looked solid enough until I dug into it with a shovel.
After that proved marginal for my purposes, I gave up on finding something close and headed down to the small paddock where I needed to re-dig a drainage channel that hoof traffic had obliterated over time. That was a long way to push a heavy wheelbarrow so I chose to finish with a lighter (and closer) load of composted manure.
I’ve got two rocks yet to place but the new steps leading past Cyndie’s strawberry patch have met with her approval thus far. We’ve walked that slope for years without steps so having just a few added breaks to the slant seems like a significant improvement.
We’ll have to see what a few freeze/thaw cycles, some heavy rain, and just passing time will do to the stability of the improvised effort.
I hope it holds because we are both pleased with the rustic look that my crude attempt has produced.
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Weed Control
We had two primary goals in mind when we plotted a strategy for what we would focus our efforts on yesterday. The first was something I hoped wouldn’t take a lot of time to accomplish. There were two tipped trees with upper branches hung up in surrounding trees. Using knowledge gained by watching the tree professionals who worked for us last spring bring down similar “widow-makers,” I readied our chainsaw and headed into the woods.
With my mind focused solely on the task at hand, I failed to take any pictures of the leaning trees or the keen aftermath of my success in bringing them down. The big poplar near the road took a lot more time than I anticipated. After five successive cuts ultimately eliminating the lower trunk that had been leaning at a 45° angle, the remaining upper portion of branches stood vertical and was still tangled in the branches of surrounding trees.
I needed to go back to the shop to get our pole chainsaw to finish the job. By the time we finished cutting trees, the day was more than half over.
The second goal was to get the hay field mowed, a job that I knew would take more hours than I really wanted to give to the task.
The growth wasn’t excessively tall but there were plenty of weeds maturing and we didn’t want them going to seed. I finally finished around 7:00 p.m. after almost 5 hours out on the tractor. At one point, feeling like it was taking too long, I tried running in a higher gear to speed up progress. The bouncing and jostling were a bit too much and the high gear made backing up hard to manage. All I could do was plod along at a steady pace in the lower gear and keep making passes until the entire field was finally cut.
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Cyndie took pictures as I headed toward the gate upon finishing. For a relatively small field, it sure is bigger than it seems.
The horses were relegated to the unmowed back pasture for the day. They are doing a fair job of grazing the good grass in that pasture but there are enough unwanted weeds in that field that it will need to be mowed soon as well.
In a day or two, they will be allowed back on the grass in the hay field. Then I will spend the better part of a day mowing the back pasture.
As much as I dread doing the mowing, the fields sure look great with all the weeds knocked down. For now, in our minds, mowing is our preferred method over chemical applications for reducing weeds that are toxic to horses. It may not be as effective, but mowing doesn’t leave a weed killer residue in our soil.
I can live with giving two afternoons of my precious time to bouncing along on the diesel tractor a couple of times a summer.
It’s easier than chainsawing widow-makers!
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Strenuous Fun
I worked almost exclusively on covering the exposed edge of another 35 yards of asphalt yesterday. It is some hard labor but it is a labor of great satisfaction. While I was toiling away, it occurred to me that this job is getting a level of attention to detail that is totally unmatched had we paid to have it done by the paving crew.
Not that I wouldn’t have preferred to have someone else do all the finishing work but it wasn’t in our budget. That’s not an isolated incident around our place. You may recall we hired a couple of professional tree trimmers to trim and fell a day’s worth of trees but had them leave everything lay where it landed for us to deal with later.
The miser in me is inclined to dodge an expense for services if I can do the work myself. I rarely get things done promptly, but I tend to focus on the money I didn’t spend, not the time it takes me to complete the work.
Speaking of the time I spend on things, I had an insight yesterday that the satisfaction I was getting out of the gravel work could be compared to my slow shaping of an artistic piece of wood sculpture. I’m crafting an outcome that I want to look good and fulfill its function even better.
Framing it like that might be a way to justify my tedious pace of progress, but it works for me because I’m getting a similar joy from the results. There are endorphins to be had by accomplishing the progress of each additional length.
I felt like I was doing twice the work yesterday because I needed to dig up and move gravel from places where there was surplus to areas that didn’t have enough. Digging up the gravel is strenuous work but it is oh so fun to pour it out on the spots that didn’t have enough.
We had some wonderful downpours of rain last night that will help settle the most recently tended lengths and will also soften the gravel to be raked up over the asphalt edge where we will be working next. Cyndie is coming home today, so I’m looking forward to having her contributions again.
Just not today. My arms need a day off. The calluses and blisters on my hands could use a break. My legs are longing to be propped up in the recliner. A guy can take only so many consecutive days of strenuous fun.
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Relative Something 