Archive for the 'bremdyman' category

After our work on the retaining wall at the beginning of last week, we had to hurry in putting grass on the newly spread dirt on our yard. Since Carrianne, my wife, was going to travel to Vancouver the Saturday and that I would the Sunday, it was going to be tight. Especially since the turf couldn’t be delivered until the Friday. Of course, as fate has it, it was delivered at 17h00 that evening. So we started working on it immediatly, placing turf on the yard. We have been able to finish about 2 thirds that evening before darkness fall.

After dropping Carrianne at the airport the next morning, my parents and I finished this chore.

We did it quickly, I hope it’s going to be Ok.

The worst in all that is that it we have been living for a year and a half in our home without any grass, and just as we get it done, we have to go on a 2 week trip…

Life’s a bitch!

Photos.

It’s been quiet on this blog lately, eh?

It’s not because I forgot about you. Oh no. It’s partly in fact because it’s summertime and that in summer, I’m rather lazy; but it’s also mostly due to the fact I made (and had made) a home improvement projects.

The land on my property is significantly higher than my neighbour’s backyard, leaving me with very few options but to build a retaining wall to avoid having a slope and thus losing a lot of space in my backyard. With nowaday’s properties, with 5 to 6000 square feet, after a shed, a pool a spa and a couple of trees, it gets pretty crowded.

Since I’m cheap, I had most of the work made by a landscaping company, like the drain, the digging, the levelling of the wall base, but I kept the chore of building up the wall, piece by piece, to myself.

We were 4 working on it. My mom, my dad, my wife and I. It took us 2 full days. After each row, we had to fill the ditch with gravel and since the ditch was (too) large, a bit of dirt too. Also, we had to glue the last 3 rows.

The wall has 8 rows, is 4 feet high and 60 feet wide. With about 80 bricks per row, it gives a total of 640 bricks. Each brick weighs 40 lbs. I thus moved 25 600 lbs of concrete bricks. And that goes without taking the 15 tons of gravel!


Of course, while I was building the wall, I noticed that they had build the wall base 1 foot short. They’re coming tomorrow to fix it and fill the ditch.

Isn’t it great?

In fact, I don’t really care whether it looks good or not, as I won’t be the one to see it everyday like my neighbour!

bremdyman


Bonus:

Here are the finally the pictures of our patio deck with railings and lattice. I’ve been sitting on these pictures for a while, and the patio deck has been in this state for a while as well. Mostly, what has taken a bit more time was the stairs railings. It was tougher to get the angles right. For the rest of the railings, the longest part was to groove all the pieces. When everything was grooved and cut it was just a matter of putting everything together.

I’m proud of the results. I’m also proud of the fact I made it with my dad. It was the first time we worked on something together. That’s quality time.

As far as the deck goes, what is left to do for next summer:

• build the pergola


• finish and close the stairs


• put gravel under the stairs


• solidify the railings


• close the bottom part of the deck

We’ve plan the phase 2, with the pool deck and spa, but it won’t be integrated with the current deck for a while.

For next summer, our priorities are the wall at the end of the yard, the landscaping, and planting grass.

Until then… it’s shoveling time.

Previously in this series: Stairs and posts.


the bremdyman

Sunday afternoon. My dad and I are installing PVC handrailings for the stairs at the front and on the side of the house, before winter settles-in. In fact, as we were finishing, snow started to fall. All of this because Gog has had an unfortunate experience while exiting the house, and I didn’t want that to happen to my wife as well. So from now on, they will be able to hang on to the handrailings while falling.

To attach the posts, we were using some folded piece of metal. One of these metal pieces was sticking out, so we used a grinder to cut it.

I open a parenthesis here to share a small anecdote.
Monday, I was chatting about that with Tchendoh, and the poor lad didn’t know what a grinder looked like.

We both thought the same thing and went on google images to search for “grinder”. The first image popping out was indeed a grinder, but a grinder with a view.

Parenthesis closed.


Like I was saying, we had to cut the metal piece. My dad went at it, but the piece moved from its position. Since I was trying to be helpful, I repositioned the metal piece using my finger.

Big mistake.

The grinder, in cutting through metal made the metal piece incredibly hot. Ouch.
I burnt myself. The skin like melted. And surrounding the wound, I could see the skin going pale. I cursed myself for being such an idiot for doing that, and the sting in my finger that lingered throughout the rest of the evening was there to remind me of that.

But it doesn’t hurt anymore. So it wasn’t all that bad. Not a big deal. All the better

In other times, this wasn’t the case however. I invite you to go read or re-read this other story that happened more than a year ago, in July 2005.
I was then pretending to be Jacques Villeneuve. I burnt myself then too, and twice even. It still shows.

brem, the not so bremdyman.