Hooray for Saturday!

So I started Saturday off strong. It was warm, and really nice.

I help out at a local produce co-op, Bountiful Baskets. We spent the morning distributing produce, but we only had eight volunteers compared to our usual 12-18, so it took a little longer than usual.

I then went home and rallies the kids to clean up the backyard. We had to get rid of the dog's "mess" and the mess made by the dog and kids. Our dog has become a chewing animal. Actually, she always was, she just seems to have gone on a bender lately.

Anyway, I got the kids working, and I started trying to level some ground to lay some pavers. I hit a rock pretty early and set out to dig it up. Right about this time, one of the neighborhood teenagers came over to heckle me, so I recruited him to the rock removal cause.

The rock turned out to be a three by three foot square of concrete with large river rock on the bottom. It was 10-12 inches thick I was able to pick it up and move it, but just barely. Moving this piece uncovered another small piece, so we started digging again.

This time we had problems finding the edge. And soon another neighbor joined the party. We took a few breaks to play with our friend Mr. Snake. He's about 16 inches long now.

After around an hour we had found more of the edges. It was about 3.5-4 feet wide and 5 feet long. This piece was between 8-15 inches thick. It also looked like it might go under the fire pit I built last year.

We tried to break this piece with a sledge hammer, we tried to pry it up, we dug under it and tries to break it again. Nothing was working. Then my neighbor mentioned he had a hand wench in his car. So he got that and we anchored it to a stump in the back. We ended up pulling the stump out of the ground (see below.)

So we anchored it to our apple tree and just tries to put some tension on the slab so we could break it easier. Still no dice. I got out my cheap Harbor Freight angle grinder, and I burned out the motor. We took some more whacks at it. It wouldn't budge. We dug some more, and got it to move a little bit.

We moved the anchor over to our maple tree. This helped pivot it a bit more. I didn't have a really good lever to use, or so I thought. I had bent my pick axe trying to use it. I went searching and found a 10 foot 4x4. I decided to use this, and we were able to move it a little bit.

We changed how the rope was placed around the slab, we went from a simple loop to a harness and it moved quite well.

Now our only problem was we were hitting the fire pit. We ended up damaging a couple of bricks on the top, which I'll have to fix later. We used the 4x4 to pry it around the pit and were able to drag it out of the hole.

I'd decided that I wasn't going to get this out of my backyard very easily, so I'm going to incorporate it into the patio. This meant we had to flip it over.

After another half hour, some more leveraging, and a bit of brute strength it was finally flipped. After the ground is leveled I'll move it into place.

This also took most of my free time for Saturday, and kind of wiped me out.

We had a barbecue at my sister-in-laws that afternoon. The wife got to hold our newborn nephew for quite some time, even though it probably wasn't enough for her.

I'm thankful for our family and neighbors.

Stair wainscoting

So after the excitement of Friday, I used Saturday to work on the wainscot, specifically on the stairs.

I knew this would be the most dramatic part, because I was making a wall of panels. Here is my blank canvas.

So I'm using an eight inch base and a six inch top rail. You want to use a smaller to rail because visually the base will look smaller because it's farther away from your eyes.

On this big wall I wanted to make it a feature. So I ran multiple cross pieces to make panels.

I'm using four inch uprights. This gives a traditional arts & crafts look. In the corners I'm using a two inch upright.

Here is the completed wall, before paint.

Then I did the other side. I found something interesting, the wall on the middle of my stairs loses an inch in height from the bottom to the top. I actually have one of my uprights (battens) in the wrong place. I'll fix that tonight.

I think the hardest part of this project is finishing the edges. To save costs I used multi-density fiberboard (MDF). This paints really well because it is fine saw dust and glue pressed between paper. The problem is the edge. It absorbs paint. You have to cover it. You can buy an expensive product, but drywall compound works great. Now I have to cover all the edges, caulk, and fill nail holes. Then it's on to paint!