Showing posts with label projects. Show all posts

Jennifer and Matias, have a nice home over in Lakeshore, MN which is located north of Gull Lake. When they bought the place, it just had a little slab outside a sliding glass patio door right off of their kitchen.

Matias being a chef, wanted to create an outdoor dining area there, so last fall they poured a much larger patio area, and then this spring the did some landscaping and added the brick walls, along with some plants and of course some mulch.




You can see it is really developing into a nice area, this spring they also got a hand me down table and chairs from my brother Neal. Below is the far end of the patio, and there are more plans to finish that corner under the stairs.

As you can see it looks very good, and will be the spot for many meals and also just visiting and relaxing, for them and their friends and of course family! Nice job Matias and Jennifer!

I accepted a construction job, that my brother Bill and his wife Kathy, wanted to do, it is building a deck around their above ground pool. So I loaded up my trailer with my assortment of tools including my radial arm saw.

I headed to the cities on Saturday morning right away, and arrived at around 9:00 am, the materials were on their way so I unloaded my trailer, and got the saw down to the work area.
The weather forecast called for rain off and on all day and I wanted to protect my saw and tools from a lot of rain.

Bill and I constructed a shelter made from some of our building materials and a tarp I brought with me, below you can see it is getting well used, and no sooner we got it put together it began to to rain, and it rained off and on all afternoon.
The pool is a 19 sided circular shaped polygon, and you can see this shot of the setup for the first ring around the pool. The post is trimmed down about 9 degrees on each side to compensate for the angles and to get the brackets attached to the post more securely.

After day one you can see below we got all 19 posts, set on their blocks and the first header ring for all the deck floor joists in place. A very time consuming process, and of course we had to haul the materials we used all down from his driveway, to the pool area, and to our work area.

Day 2 started around 7;15 am and we began putting the second and outer ring in place around the exterior of the landscaped area. We started where the pump station is for the pool and worked clockwise around the exterior. Placing more posts and also the another joist support between them and then actually placing the joists for the deck boards like spokes going out to the outer distance.

This is where we got to on the far right side of the pool, and it shows how the floor is going together. The long posts will be the rail posts, as there is about an 8 foot drop or more from the terraced edge that the pool sits on.

So after two days we have about 2/3 of the framing completed and the 1/3 we have left is going to be quicker work, as most of that will sit on the terraced wall that you see on the bottom edge of the pool in some of the other pictures.

Lots to do yet, but it is definitely taking shape and everything is very level and solid!

Well below you can see all the new woodchips that we have used to freshen up the grounds and fill the new path around the gazebo to the new Porta Potty, on the south side of Wooden Nichols!

This was about a total of 9 yards of woodchips that we had Crystalie's brother Mitch hauled in his large dump truck named Popeye!

The other 3 yards of the total 12 yards ended up at Coffee lake Farm and was used to freshen up the gazebo walkway that is pictured in my blog title!

I had a helper named Rebekah, who helped level things as i hauled all the chips around in a wheelbarrow, and she also picked up any sticks that were not shredded up in the woodchips....thank you Rebekah!

Rebekah and I have a long lists of Projects to work on tomorrow afternoon and also on Wednesday. I am taking a little time off to work on the projects.

We have some new woodchips to put down on the gazebo path, and I have some other areas here at the farm that need the same. Then we will be off to Wooden Nichols to do the same there, along with some other yard stuff there.

We have to also, unload my slabwood from the trailer and Rebekah will get to stack her first bit of firewood working with Grandpa. There will be lots of other things and I will try to document them. There will be some fun breaks in there also so watch for more adventures of Rebekah at Coffee Lake Farm!

Today is Sunday, I returned home from a trip to the cities to see my Granddaughters Livia and Adeline perform in their Ballet Recital. I got home and headed over to Wooden Nichols to work with rocks and the new path. Above you see the process of removing the sod, about a 5 foot swath around the Corn Crib Gazebo.

I got all the sod removed from the 5 foot swath, and started placing the rocks.

You can see here we have two rows of rocks, the reason being Crystalie wanted to plant some plants that could climb up the Gazebo, and so I left about a foot of space between the inside ring and the wall of the Gazebo.

I still have some sod and rocks to place behind the large pine tree, the porta potty, will be located against the wall of the building between the two south facing windows. So more to follow.

Your looking at a trailer load of rocks I purchased from a place north of Brainerd.

This is about two tons of rocks, and will soon be the border of the new path to the porta potty, at Wooden Nichols.

We have 80 acres of property and believe it or not there are not any larger stones on it due to it being mostly sand and some swamp land.

I wish North Dakota was closer, I grew up picking rocks off of the fields we farmed for years and we have piles of rocks around. But with gas prices and wear and tear on a vehicle so costly, the alternative was to buy some locally.

Hopefully this weekend I will get the stones placed, and then we have to get the woodchip mulch to put down for the path.

But tomorrow I have a Cultural Event to attend, my daughter Misty's two girls have their Ballet Recital tomorrow afternoon!

Tonight, I got home from a day on the road, hooked up my yard tractor to the old cultivator section I have and started busting up the new garden spot.

It is still pretty wet in that area, and the soil there is pretty heavy, which will be good for the plants as it will hold the moisture well this summer meaning I won't have to water it to much.

I plan to add a bunch of composted manure and hay, to this area and work that in and it will help warm the soil up and and also lighten it a little more. Plus the fiber will provide a good mulch on the ground for cover and weed growth, till the jungle of pumpkin vines and squash, cover it all.

I also have to get a fence around it before I can do much planting! More to do!