Sam Sheep's Bedroom

I mentioned in my last post that I had been struggling to write it - one of the reasons it was finally completed was that I wanted to move on to writing about the Great Bedroom Switch. When we moved into our current pad a little over three (count 'em) years ago, Quinster and Samuel Sheep wanted to share a bedroom - getting them set up with platform beds was the first real post in this blog as it happens. 

They've both grown a lot bigger in the last few years - such that I've lost my place as tallest member of our quintet - and the desk spaces are not designed to accommodate anybody over five foot six. The upshot of all this is that Quinn Sheep shipped out to the spare room in the basement,* leaving Sam and myself to spruce up his new bedroom!

This is what the platform beds looked like with the trimmings removed. Sam and I had two of these to dismantle and stow away. Once the beds were removed it was clear we would have to make some repairs....!

I patched the walls up one night after work, and then the following saturday we hoiked all the furniture out of the room and got to work with the paint brush and roller. We started with the ceiling and I had Sam do the cutting in while I worked the roller.

After the ceiling was done it was time fort quick cup ot tea an a slice ot doins. For the walls Sam took over with the roller and I switched to the brush.

All done with the first coat - time for a spot of luncheon over in the dining room. Amy Sheep was AWOL so Sam had to step up and make the toasted ham sandwiches.

All done with the second coat!  By this time Amy Sheep was on hand to put t'ettle on and hand out the wagon wheels.**

There was just enough daylight left for us to put the furniture back in the room and construct Sam's new bed. 

And not a moment too soon! All that working the roller wore him out!

A couple of weeks later the LED lighting Sam ordered showed up and we spent Saturday morning installing it.

The colors can be changed from the comfort of one's bed with a remote control.

(*yes, this is bad news for guests, if we ever have any again....)

(**ok, so I haven't had a wagon wheel since I left the uk, but that doesn't stop me from thinking about them...)

Front Yard part two

It's been a while since my last post, partly because I've been busy making a living, partly because progress with the yard project has been slowed by the heatwaves and by a some other priorities, but mostly due to a severe case of writer's block. This has been a labor intensive project that has not exactly sparked joy, and writing about it has been a low priority...until now! 

So, this is where we got up to last time out: we've installed extended posts at the front of the upper planter and improved the drainage, and we've built the first section of the stairs. 

Ultimately we plan to continue the stairs down to the fence/gate in front of the shed, and construct a third planter. We will be extending the height of both existing planters by six inches (or one board width), improving the drainage, and installing some additional bracing which we hope will stop the planters from bowing. 

We planned to spend most of the Labor Day weekend, the last public holiday before Thanksgiving and traditionally the end of Summer, ploughing on with the project. While typical labor day activities might include barbeques, picnics and pool-based socializing, the there is not much of that going on at the moment.....so we might as well spend three full days grinding away....at least, that was the plan....

Samuel Sheep was around right at the beginning of this part of the project so he started us off by removing the boards from the front of the lower planter: 

The dirt in the planter was very dry, so we didn't suffer any slippage.

The boards we took off were transplanted onto the other raised bed...

And, after we replaced the original upright posts with new longer ones, the rest of the original boards were added to the sides and rear of the planter they came from.

This is where it gets interesting. There is a statewide lumber shortage right now due to all the production time the sawmills have lost through you-know-what, so we were not able to get the 2"x 6" redwood lumber we needed in twelve foot lengths.....all we could get was a bunch of sixteen foot boards....getting them home from the store was an interesting experience! They only just fitted inside the garage:

We installed the top board on the second planter and started digging out for the cross braces. It was getting very hot by this point, somewhere around 30 C/90 F according to the interwebs, but it felt a lot hotter.

This is a bit later with the second brace installed and the base rock packed behind and below the lower board:

All done! Well, all done with the planter modifications that is. If it looks hot in these photos, that's because it was. It was well above what my father used to call "B. Hot." We actually had to retreat back inside the house at this point, because it was just too hot to to stand around, never mind work...

By about 4:30 pm the temperature was just about bearable in the shade, so we set up riser production on the porch.

By now most of the yard was in the shade, so we moved on to installing the next riser.

The location of the riser also dictates the location of the third raised bad, so the next step was to start laying out the corner posts. This was as far as we got because it was still mega hot and we were tired and dehydrated.

The next morning, after our customary lie-in, Amy Sheep set sail for the grocery store, and I ventured back outside to continue building the third planter. It was even hotter on this day, and I did not get very far before I had to crawl back out of the sun.

I didn't realize it at the time, but that was the last bit of the work I did in direct sunlight - it was just too hot. We we did accomplish was done after the sun passed over. The third bed is mainly complete - we need to acquire some more 2" x 6" redwood to finish it up....whenever that becomes available.

We also did some more work on the steps....

To be continued....

Front Yard part one

We've received a lot of feedback on our garden tool shed - most of it wondering about when the tools were going to be put to use. Well wonder no longer! 

In February 2019 we built our first two raised beds at the top of our side yard, and approximately eighteen months later we're ready to go back to work on this area - we have plans for another raised bed, a set of stairs between the beds and the gate, and a low retaining wall at the front of this area. 

A couple of weeks ago we picked up a bunch of 4" x 6" PT lumber, the same stuff we used for the base of the tool shed, and set to work on the stairs. Amy Sheep wanted to dig out for the stairs with a spade, but that idea only lasted a couple of shovelfuls...

....before we broke out the jackhammer and fitted the spade attachment - this process works best with one person manning the jackhammer and a second shovelling the loose dirt into a wheelbarrow. This is the situation after about half an hour of excavating and a quick mock up of how the risers will look:

The risers were cut from  4" x 6" PT, and I bored three (3) 1/2 inch diameter holes in each riser.

We bought a bunch of 1/2 inch rebar, which I cut into two foot pieces with the screaming wheel of death - it is much cheaper to do this than to buy the rebar in shorter lengths.

Each riser was installed on top of a level bed of road base, and pinned with three pieces of rebar - whacking the rebar into the ground was the toughest part of the project.

By the end of day one we had five risers installed at the side of the raised beds.

It was a couple of weeks before we got another chance to work on the project. We started out by digging out space to install the side pieces of the stairs - this was done with a combination of the jackhammer, the shovel and the wheelbarrow.

This is the look after the first side piece was installed:

Doing the digging was hard work because it was supper hot at the time, as this photo sort-of shows:

We installed the side pieces with a 2 foot rebar stake at the upper end.....

...and a pair of six inch screws at the other end which are driven into the perpendicular riser. The next side piece goes on top of the previous section which obscures the rebar stake:

It is not obvious in these photos, but the side sections are also installed on top of leveled road base.

As we worked further up the stairs the dirt gave way to rock - fortunately it was no match for the jackhammer, but it did make hammering in the rebar very difficult.

We're going to be modifying the two original raised beds as part of this project - they need to be a little bit more "raised" and we need to improve the structure and the drainage. We started off by removing the front of the upper bed:

We then dug back the dirt back about six inches from the front of the bed, and six inches below, and then re-installed the lowest board onto two new corner posts - the posts are six inches longer than they were originally.

After also replacing the two central posts, we filled the trough below the lower board and the area behind it with crushed stone:

The remaining boards were then re-installed and backfilled with dirt, one at a time.

When this was done then bed looks the same except for the new posts which protrude enough for one more board to be installed. At present there is a state-wide shortage of lumber in California because the saw the mills have lost a lot of production time to the pandemic. We may have to wait a while before we can get hold of the twelve foot lengths of lumber we need.

This is the big picture after two more-or-less full days of work on this area:

We'll be building a low-ish retaining wall at the top of this area in the near future.

The third raised bed will be going in the space where this year's pumpkin crop is located.