Rain, Rain, And Concrete In the Way

It's been a wet, wet, wet week. Despite the rain warnings, we've been out every day and pushing on with the fence installation. The pergola is installed (yay!), but the fence panels are not up yet. I'm beginning to understand that this project is not going to be a 3 or even a 12-step process, but a multi, multi-multistep, non-linear process that is sure to have even more twists and turns.

Here I am loading up the car with some last minute supplies:

The spikes that hold up the fence posts were pretty easy going into the ground, until we got to the last one and a major kink arose:

Kink: As we were driving the last fence spike into the ground with the sledgehammer, we heard the CLUNK of a giant lump of concrete. We spent 4 hours to no avail trying to figure out how deep and wide this impostor was. Matt gave it his best with the chisel bit on the hammer drill and a few good wacks with the sledge. As darkness fell, we gave up and took advantage of grandparents visiting to catch the much talked about Avatar. This was our first movie out in over a year since the baby was born! On the way to the theater, we phoned a friend for some advice.

Solution: Dave Croft helped Matt come up with a wacky solution that involved a milk container, concrete, and nails. The crux of the solution involved taking advantage of the lump of concrete by countersinking in a handful of 3" screws to act as rebars. The impostor became the foundation to support a fresh-formed new lump of concrete that was made by retrofitting a plastic milk jug into a mold. Grampa had meetings in Vancouver so,luckily, we had him for a few rainy hours of muddy grunt work this morning. I regret not having photos of Peter in his full rainy day regalia.

Here is a detail shot of the nails and the milk-container form work:

This is the finished product drying under a plastic bag:

The pergola went up more or less without much ado except for near frost-bite-like numbness to our extremities and some scraped knuckles. The biggest challenge here was making sure all the posts and beams were plumb and level. All the neighbors and passer-byes seemed to appreciate our beautification efforts and it's been a great way for us to get to know our new community.

Here are some photos of what we accomplished today with the pergola (note the panic in Matt's grimace):

Please notice the tricky varying ground levels and general aura of handiness in the below, almost-finished image -- we were too cold and it was too dark to take a final image of today's accomplishments.

Although the rest of the week's weather forecast remains rainy, we're still aiming to get the fence panels up and completed by the end of the week!