Friday, May 24, 2013

Front arbor project

Between the crazy hot and cold and wet (in the same week!) weather and a nearly solid granite front yard, the front arbor project has taken a little longer than expected. I always love when Garry says "Oh, sure - I can do that in an afternoon/few/hours/weekend" and then it ends up taking... oh... 2 months.

Right now we have the four posts in the ground and a coat of stain/sealant on them.


The other two posts are stained/sealed... I just took this the morning before Garry did them.

You don't notice it too much, but the ground is REALLY uneven around the posts and slopes in two directions. While it's not a big deal for walking, trying to be up on a ladder to stain the tops of the posts was not an easy task... and I have terrible balance.

We still need to move all of the dirt/rocks out of the yard and build the rest of the arbor as well as give it all another coat of stain/sealant. While it seems like the white color we chose is a little redundant, eventually we'll be painting the house another color, so the white will really stand out - especially with some light-salmon colored David Austen climbing roses winding around them.

And yes, our lawn desperately needs a good weed and feed. It's safe to say we have more things other than grass growing than actual grass. Once I get more of the landscaping done that I plan to do, it will reduce the amount of actual "lawn" we have - not by a lot, but it will help make it more manageable. Adding edging with paver stones will also help. But, our lawn is in pretty bad shape.

This weekend it's supposed to be considerably colder compared to the beginning of this week - so the plan is to start working on the hutch (as described in my last post). I think tonight I will do a test area to find out how long I'll need to leave the stripping agent on the piece (so if I have to leave it on overnight I can apply it and then scrape it off tomorrow).

I'm giving myself a small goal of just getting the bottom piece stripped and cleaned over the long weekend. This is going to be a summer-long project I'm sure. There are so many little details that it will take a while to get all of it. I also want to do it correctly - so that ultimately means really taking my time since I'm a novice (at best) at refinishing furniture.

But, back to the arbor... I'm hoping Garry can get some more work done on it this weekend. Ideally, I'd like to have it *finished* this weekend, but we have a fairly busy schedule as-is so I'm not holding my breath.

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