But, for those who check in on the blog to see what ive been doing, here it is:
Ive been doing lots of "outside" house renovating, or more acurately, yard renovating...
As I think I mentioned earlier (see I dont even remember what my earlier posts were about!) I first cut down the massive Laurl hedges which took over a month of effort.
But that was while I was working a contract. that contract finished about a month ago and ive used my time off to do some more "constructive" yard work
But again, first there was some destruction... Specifically, that storage box i built in the back yard years ago had become very ugly, very leaky and was a kind of storage place for stuff that i didnt have anywhere else to put... Its time had come and it Had to Go!!
So it took a few days to empty all the stuff out of it and then strip off the rotten old tarps, un-screw and disassemble the panel sections, pull out all the rusty nails and stack up all the resulting plywood sheets and wooden beams.
And that left me with a lovely big clear space again :))
This is a picture of the box immediately after i completed building it several years ago... i dont have one of its current condition, but believe me, its rather delapidated to say the least... winters are very long and very wet up hear and poorly protected wood does not survive well!
And then I needed somewher to store some of that stuff that Id removed from the box, so i built a smaller "garden shed" under a section of over-hanging deck... I built the foundation much stronger this time so it should survive the wet conditions here far better than the old box. I built the new box using the materials from the old box, so it cost me very little other than the concrete for the footings and the sheets of metal roofing (again a significant upgrade from the previous design). i still have to put exterior cladding on the walls but that can wait a while.
And then I moved all the garden tools from my garage (which is used for "everything" at the moment) into there own new space... ahhh much better :)
So, now for the bigger project which was to use that "open space" that i just created to build a car-port so that my little pick-up truck that I spent all that money on renovating is out of the worst of the weather most of the time.
So, first off I spent about a week digging through the asphalt and constructing four good big solid concrete footings and giving the concrete time to cure.
and then I got a load of wood and roofing delivered (cos my little truck just cant take 6metre long beams no matter how I try to arange it... Its got a 1metre long bed! :)
And then fairly quickly I assembled the new car-port. It only took a couple of days to assemble and that was doing it entirely by my-self... Which makes it much slower than if I had a helper because, as I expect you can imagin, its not that easy for one person to lift and hold and bolt both ends of a 6metre long 2x12 beam etc.
And then the roofing iron went on and the finishing end board, and Voila! i have a new car port... :)))
Now, I'd already spent lots more money than I actually had on the car port, so expensive flights and international resorts were not an option... But I do have my trusty old (though maybe that should be "rusty old") touring bike, so I packed up my gear and headed off on the bike for a few days of riding :))
... next post :)
