Saturday, August 11th, 2007
Yeeeeees, our Sean Conwayâ„¢ Tiverton 2006 Dining Set has arrived.
I came home yesterday to see two big boxes on the front porch. I was wondering how they were going to ship this thing. Well, they put the four chairs in one big box and the table top and other parts in another big flat box.
I took the chairs out and attached the cushions. Then, I had to put together the table. It came with legs and individual tiles to put in their places as the table top. I was a little concerned that the tiles would crack in transit, but they didn’t. They were packed pretty well. Two extra tiles came as well, which is good, because two tiles have chipped corners. It looks like they were that way before the set was packed up. I think the tiles are regular 12″ square tiles, which is cool, because if we ever want to change the look pf the table, we can pick up some tiles from Home Depot or Lowes.
Anyway, here is the table all set up…
It’s pretty nice. I sat at it this morning and had my coffee while reading a magazine.
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Thursday, April 26th, 2007
Well, well, well. I think we’re going to do it. All that’s left with the house is to re-do the bathroom, kitchen and the back porch. Yeah, just the bathroom, kitchen and back porch….ya know, those cheap and easy projects.
We are going tackle the back porch first. The one we have is in pretty bad shape. It’s made with that Trex stuff…only, I don’t think it is Trex. It may be some knockoff, who knows. All I know is it’s gray and very washed out looking. Also, the porch may be a little crooked, which drives me absolutely mad. The railings are hanging on by a thread due to poor workmanship and the top of the porch collects water. The whole thing just looks really bad. Are those enough reason to get this thing done? (Oh yeah, the bugs out here are TERRIBLE! The current porch is pretty useless as is.)
As you may already know, I made our front porch. I am a pretty handy fella, but I just don’t want to do this one. The first reason is that this one will be screened in…meaning there will be a roof. I am really not in the mood to attempt to build that by myself. Also, I want it done quickly, so no messing around. It would take me about two years to get home all the lumber strapped to the top of my car again. I like to do projects little by little.
I am going to use a contractor that is a friend of my neighbor. He seems like he would do a good job of coming in a putting this thing up quickly. The porch will be 16′ out the back of the house and 20′ wide. There will be 6 sonotube footings, 12″ wide. There will be 2 main girders holding up 2×10″ joists. Everything will be pressure treated. For the floor, he will put down 6×1 5/8″ boards with a 4×4″ every 4′ to hold up the roof. The main beam holding up the roof will be a 4×6″. The roof will have to be built into the current roof, which is the tricky part…to me. I am sure it will take no time for these guys. Also, they are going to put in a set of 4′wide stairs about 4′ out from the house. Currently, the stairs are slapped right up against the house and very loose.
I asked that they don’t complete the railings and the screening. I want to do them. Those are things that I can take my time on. Also, I am going to tear down the current deck. My neighbor, Tim wants to burn it. I have to keep him away because it is pressure treated and I can use the wood for another project. Tim is disappointed, but still willing to help me.
I picked up the building permit from the buidling inspector yesterday morning and have to fill it in and drop it off so the contractor can draw his diagram.
Now, of course, you are going to see lots of pictures of this. I hope you are as excited as we are!
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Thursday, November 9th, 2006
A while back, I ordered some trees from The National Arbor Day Foundation. I received the Norway Spruce trees the other day, but found the bulk of the other trees sitting on my front porch last night, when I pulled in the driveway from work. I was a little curious about the size of them.
When I opened the package of Norway Spruces, I was pleasantly surprised to see 10 trees, each about one foot high. They were pretty full trees. These trees come with their roots bunched up together and surrounded by gel in a plastic bag. It is recommended that you plant the trees immediately upon receiving them. Luckily, I saved all the plastic containers from all the shrubs I purchased throughout the summer. I mixed some topsoil with some sandy loam and planted all the Norway Spruce trees…one per container. I added these new trees to the collection of about 25 I am growing on my back porch.
As I mentioned above, the rest of the trees were waiting for me last night (by the way, I ordered a new shipment yesterday). I found two boxes with 3 Red Maple trees, 1 Paper Birch, 10 Canadian Hemlock trees and 3 Saucer Magnolias.
The common question everyone has is how big the trees are when you get them. Here is some insight. The Red Maples came about 2-3 feet high, the Paper Birch came about 4 feet high, the Hemlocks came about 8 inches tall and here is the good part…the Saucer Magnolias came about 6 inches high. They say these trees are supposed to be 1-2 feet high. Oh well. I have all these trees planted now in their own buckets on the back porch. In a few years, I will be able to plant them in their final place.
Obviously, these trees are meant for patient people, but go ahead, give it a shot and get your own!
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Saturday, September 23rd, 2006
When I was building my new front porch, installing the spindles was one of the last things I had to do. Luckily, I have a very good eye and there were no curveballs. I spaced the spindles at the minimum gap code allowed…4 inches. They lined up as close to perfect as anyone can expect for a nice country style porch. I knew there was a more defined way to do this, but didn’t really need to look into it because of my master craftsmanship (haha).
Well, there is a proper way and here it is. Bob wrote a wonderful post on how to do it with a variety of alternatives to choose from as well as the exact measurements necessary. Good job Bob and William! Funny, I don’t remember learning about any “Inter-spindle gap” growing up…hmmm.
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Thursday, September 21st, 2006
Ahhh…the hidden wonder in the woods. It’s amazing how many people live in this area or go to school close by and have never been to the Mohonk Mountain House. This interesting resort, perched on a mountaintop, truly is a destination.
The very first time Laura and I went to the Mountain House we were kind of…ho hum about the whole thing. People tell us all the time about how we just HAVE to visit here or HAVE to visit there. This time we took whoever told us about it on their word.
We arrived at the front gate and were kind of taken back at the fact that they wanted $20 per person to go up the hotel. We negotiated at a lower fee (I think $8 per person) for a one hour visit. What in the world were these people charging us to visit a hotel for? We drove through the gate and continued on for a two mile drive through the woods. Hmmm…this place was pretty nice. It was a very well taken care of path through the woods. We saw hikers on both sides of us enjoying the wilderness. The trees canopied over the road making things very shady and cool, just the way I like it.
When we arrived at the base of the hotel, we saw a few fenced in areas with horses. Pretty cool. Then…we parked the car and walked up the hill to see…
…the front of the hotel. Wow, what an interesting place. I think I was expecting something else. We walked up to the front and saw valet parking and about one hundred rocking chairs on the front porch facing the Catskills. I was beginning to like this place more and more. I really could get into sipping some red wine and rocking my life away.
We continued through the hotel to find that the inside was strikingly similar to the Shining…long halls, lots of wood and a good number of staircases. I can just imagine how many fireplaces this hotel had. There were people walking through quickly on their way someplace important and those who were just wandering aimlessly looking at the paintings. We were right in the middle because we had no idea where we were going. We heard some sort of activity towards the back of the hotel and began heading towards it. Hmmm…tea time. I can do this. We weren’t sure if this was meant for the guests or for everybody. Since I paid $16 for the both of us to visit today, I considered us guests. We proceeded to enjoy tea and cookies with the rest of the “guests.” It was so funny…Laura just kept looking at me and laughing inside, I’m sure.
Now that our appetites were a slightly satisfied, we wandered off the back porch towards the lake. Let me just tell you…well, take a look.
Have you ever seen anything like it? Remember, this place is on top of a mountain. Behind the hotel is a huge mountain (down). This is where everyone hangs out and goes boating, swimming and hiking. People were making their ways up to the tower on top of the hill and some were arriving though the end of the eight mile trail that begins way down towards another part of the ridge. There were also places to sit and ponder.
If you exit the back of the hotel and make a left, you can visit the gardens.
This is a great area to get married. Apparently many people do. Being the botanists we are, we loved looking through the large variety of flowers and plants.
There are so many things to do at the Mountain House, but since we only had an hour, we had to hustle back to the car. I kept thinking there was going to be some sort of a check at the gate. Hint, hint: there was none. We will have to keep that in mind for next time.
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Sunday, September 3rd, 2006
Please take a look at this front porch. It’s the one that came with our house. Tell me if you see anything wrong with it.
For months, I didn’t give it a second thought, but soon enough, in the mornings, as I pulled out of the driveway and started to drive down the road, I would look it at and get crazier and crazier every time. Forget the fact that the paint is chipping off of it and the fake, plastic lattice has green fungus all over it, doesn’t it look like it is bowed down in the middle? Also, what is with the 3.5 foot wide stairs? You have all that room on both sides.
One day this spring (2006) I was working on another project, which you will hear all about in another post, and I just happened to glance at the porch. I said to myself, “That really looks horrible.” I guess this is what a front porch looks like when it is built incorrectly and not taken care of. I walked over to it and began to wiggle and pull on things. Next thing I know, I looked at my watch and it was an hour later. I looked at the porch and the whole thing was torn down. Uh oh, what was Laura going to think when she got home? Oh well, she’ll LOVE it I told myself very proudly. What woman doesn’t love a man who knows how to tear down a porch with absolutely no idea how to put it back up?
Laura got home and didn’t really care. She had faith. So that night and for many nights after that, I was on the internet gathering ideas and tips. I made many trips to Home Depot and brought back supplies strapped to my new Thule roof rack I had purchased just for this type of work. I started putting things back together, but this time I did them the way I wanted.
I put a center footing in, jacked up the center of the porch and put a nice 6″x6″ post there. The problem was that there was no center support for an 11′ span. Of course it was going to bow downward. I also put new 6″x6″ corner posts in below the porch to the existing footings as well as above the porch to the overhang. I used the existing footings because they were the correct depth and width. I know this because I tried to dig one of them out and gave up after an hour. I really wanted a WHOLE new porch, but with something this secure already installed (and inspected by the building inspector), I’ll take it. I used one inch high galvanized spacers in between the bottoms of the posts and the footings as to avoid wood rot. I screwed a 2″x6″ to the front of the porch as a lip for the top stair which would come later. I also put corner pieces in for nothing more than aesthetics. I found that idea on the internet.
If you noticed on the first photo, the bottom of the stairs were rested on a cement slab. I hate cement slabs. I broke that one up with a sledge hammer and got rid of it. I dug three more holes and put in footers for the bottom of the stairs. I used 5 stringers (3 of which I reused from the old stairs, they were in great shape) for the stairs. The horozontal part of the steps were 6 foot 2″x12″s and for the vertical part I reused the 2″x6″ pieces from the top of the porch. I reused a lot of lumber because it was in great shape and I didn’t want to waste wood as well as throw money out the window.
The stairs went up smoothly and I was ready to move on. I took my…ummm…40th trip to Home Depot and picked up all the supplies for the handrails. Before I stared the handrails, I screwed an 8′ 2″x6″ to either side of the top of the deck. This gave me a perfectly straight running surface for my circular saw to cut off the uneven ends of wood. For the handrails, I used a pretty good system of sandwiching 1″x1″ pieces in between 2 of what they call “Lattice Moulding” 4 inches apart. Code calls for each of the 1″x1″ to be no further than 4″ apart. Then, I placed this new “unit” on top of a vertical 2″x6″ and tucked under the actual handrail piece. This hides all the screw heads for the 1″x1″s. The reason I used the vertical 2″x6″s is because I didn’t want to see any sagging of the rail after 2 months (like I am sure we have all seen). This was a lot of fun and gave me the feeling of really getting somewhere. I cut holes in the floor for the vertical posts and screwed and bolted them to the inside of the joists underneath. I did this because I didn’t want to see the outside of these posts just screwed to the side of the porch. I wanted them hidden. This takes longer but looks much better.
I finished up the stair portion of the railings by using a vertical 2″x4″ instead of the 2″x6″ because when the wood is cut on an angle, the 2″x6″ was just too high and didn’t meet the next piece correctly. Also, please note that I used “screws” for all of this construction. I never understood why people used nails when building things like this. How many times have you stubbed your tow or worse on a nail popping up from someone’s porch? Also, all the wood was pressure treated. These days, you always need to use pressure treated lumber when building anything outside.
After a few weeks I picked up two gallons of Thompson’s Water Seal and gave it a nice coating with a brush. I used only 3/4 of a gallon, so I guess I have enough for next time. The back of the can said that it will last for two years before it needs to be reapplied. When it comes time to reapply, I will use a sprayer. Also, the can said to wait 30 days before applying any protectant, so if you have ever heard the myth about waiting a year before applying anything, that’s wrong. Your porch or deck will be gray by that point. I waited about 3 weeks and figured that the wood has probably been sitting for a while, so I was safe.
Now, when I pull out of the driveway in the morning, I see a nice straight and level porch!
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Sunday, September 3rd, 2006
We had a pretty large Red Oak tree in the front yard. Just large enough to take out the front porch if a good wind came though. Pretty gusty winds hit during the winter and head straight for the house. This would not be a major concern, but there were dead roots on the backside of the trunk. You could see them going right into the dirt. I felt that the dead roots, the height of the tree, the wind direction and the strength of the wind warranted that the tree come down.
We hired a local tree service and they were more than happy to take the tree down, cut up the wood (and leave it here) and chip the brush for $400. We went on a 3 day vacation and when we came back…gone. I rolled the firewood to the side of the road and within an hour, someone was taking it. People love firewood around here, especially since it is around $200 a cord now and I was giving it away for free.
Above is the only photo I could find of the existing tree. It was taken through a screen (obviously).
So, after we had the tree removed, it was just killing me to look at this ugly stump in the front yard. I got a great idea from the neighbors and cut out a kidney shaped mulch bed.
Ok, now that I made this beautifully shaped mulch bed, how the heck was I going to get the stump lower, so I could cover it up with the mulch I was going to get. Well, just as luck would have it, I purchased a brand new Stihl MS 250 with a 16″ bar a week earlier. This is a pretty good homeowner’s saw. I am used to the professional ones, so I know how to really work them. This one likes to bog down when it gets hot, but if you keep it nice and steady, it is a good strong saw. I began cutting the stump lower…
…and then the saw started getting hot, and so did I. I got half way through and started smacking the stump with a sledge hammer to break the half that was already cut off. This made cutting the second half easier. This size stump really calls for a larger saw, but I had confidence that I would get this thing cut…and I did. Man oh man…wood near the stump of a tree is very dense and hard to cut.
Then, the next Saturday morning Paul came over and we ran down to the local mulch dealer and picked up a yard of mulch to cover the entire area with. It was just enough mulch for now, but I will be getting another yard in the spring to make it nice and thick.
So for about a month or so, we kept it like this and the neighbors started to wonder. The area is pretty close to the road so people see it when they walk by. We went to Lowe’s and picked up a few Rhododendrons and some Midget Arborvitae, or Thuja to place as a back layer. The Rhododendrons will grow pretty large, but the Arborvitae will only grow to approximately 3′x3′.
We also placed a few random plants on either side, as we got them. We like to mix them up to keep things random…it’s a great look to have. Also, we are getting these plants at towards the end of summer, so we really have no idea what the will look like when they bloom in the spring.
Some of them are difficult to identify, but I know a few. We are getting most of them from a friend. In the photo above there are Easter Lilys, Sage and Hydrangea. There are a few more, but I have no idea what they are. As you can see, I used the shallow, smaller potted plants for directly on top of the stump. I will be sure to keep them watered until I get that second load of mulch.
In the photo above, we have a Butterfly Bush, some sort of a purple bush with little prickers on it, Sedum Autumn Joy and another bush that I will try to identify later. We left the center of the garden empty because we ordered a variety of 150 bulbs from Brecks. 100 of them are going to be planted in the center spot.
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