Roadside Mysteries

The super tall Populus trees on the south-west side of the house:

One of the trees was dead and another was on the way soon

A local tree service parked on the FRCC parking lot and reached over the fence to take down sections of each tree

A nice day to cut these tall trees.

Duncan checks out the logs where squirrels used to run

A similar tree went down next door during some wind gusts and smashed part of a neighbors house so it was only a matter of time that we would experience a similar fate. Strange, I don’t miss these trees as much as I thought I would.

No, we’re not replacing Duncan Madog… yet!

Holes dug by dogs?

Well, no, not exactly. Our neighbor just got a cute Cocker Spaniel puppy for their kids and realized they needed to put up a fence in the back yard for the dog to have some playing room. They hired a “construction” company from the town of Wellington to help put up the fence this winter. Problems developed right away as the ground was frozen and there were periods when it would snow and not melt in the afternoon like it always had in the past. The contractors didn’t have a clue where to dig. One of them was observed using a dowsing rod; I asked him what he was looking for. He couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me. I convinced the owned of the property to call 811 before these idiots dug any holes! They also needed for me to find my sprinkler heads which was hard to do in the winter.

The picture above is a partial result of their work. Can you see the cut cable? Yes, it seems they cut our Comcast cable in at least three places! God, what idiots!

And even more holes

OK, these holes were dug and then a few days later, posts and concrete were placed in the holes (by a technique that defies explanation). Now a snow storm is coming! Will they finish the job before the big snow? Stay tuned.

Here’s the situation:

The back yard as of June 24, 2010

It’s been almost two years and we put up with this crummy cement slab porch long enough! It’s time to put in a deck! Of course we had to re-route the sprinkler system and move some loose stones (where you see the bare earth in the picture above).

Truck delivering the goods

We decided on using Trek® composite for the deck boards and treated lumber for the support. There was a sale on an appropriate color of Trek® at the local Home Depot and now we have it.

Building materials sitting in our driveway!

OK. I build banjos and Magic Agogo Belts and I did a few home improvements over the years, but I’ve never attempted something this big. I now have all this crap in my driveway and I better do something with it soon or the HOA will start sending me nasty letters! What we have here is a lot of heavy lifting: From left to right we have 52 Deck Blocks, assorted 12 foot long 2×6 and 4×4 treated lumber and finally 53 12 foot long composite boards. Thanks to everyone who came out to help lift and carry and put things into place!

The supports are in!

It didn’t take long to get this started. It’s really just a simple 12×24 deck about 24 inches off the ground. How hard could that be?

Oops, a design change in the middle of the project!

Jeanne would like a bench on the south side of the deck. I decided to include a semi-cantilevered bench design held together with lag bolts top and bottom.  It sure seems strong enough… One good drunken party will tell!

Are we done yet?

The final part was getting the composite boards screwed into the supports. It took at least a week of screwing around to get that done!

The deck furniture and grill now fits!

…with room to spare for the gazebo and hot tub! But there’s no time to do that right now. I’ve got to prepare for the annual feast of the Ragbrai and my hands are a mess from drilling in all those deck screws. Lots of banjo playing is in order for the next few days!