June 2003

June 3, 2003: At night around the tribal fire, the ancients still tell of a time, many moons ago, when a great fiery yellow orb lit the sky, lighting and warming all it touched, and causing the plants, and the animals, and the children of the earth to be glad. We do not know what caused the orb great displeasure, but it disappeared one day without warning, casting the Earth into shadow. We now live in the Shadowland, always hoping that we, or our children, or our children's children, will someday be once again graced with the light of the orb...

Yes, it's still raining. There was a front page article in the paper a few days ago that ever so helpfully pointed out that the state experienced a grand total of two sunny days in the entire month of May. Like its readership didn't know that-- we live here. The entire state's a soggy mess, and there's apparently no end in sight.

Despite another wet weekend, our new hero, Bobcat Guy, came through for us. He showed up Saturday morning bright and early, and gritted through a couple or three cloudbursts to get the pool deck removed and loaded into the dumpster, and the area excavated for the attached patio. Of course, the ground was wet, and all that excavated dirt had to go somewhere, so the entire pool area is now an unholy mess:

Now it's off to the stoneyard to place an order for gravel, stone dust and flagstone, and pray for a weekend dry enough to begin laying the new pool deck and patio.

June 10, 2003: Welcome back to Brickman House...

Yes, it's still raining. Another soggy weekend, another weekend dashing in and out of the house during occasional breaks in the rain trying to get something, anything, done around here. You know, rain comes with the territory in Spring in the Mid-Atlantic, so we were prepared for some wet weather, but when we realized we haven't had a dry weekend in six weeks, we became a bit disheartened. When we realized we've lost almost two months of working time on the house, and several projects we wanted to complete this season just wouldn't get done, we got downright depressed. At this rate, we'll be lucky to finish the pool deck and patio by mid-summer, and will be lucky to get the siding and trim repaired and the house painted before cold weather sets in. Forget replacing the rotting and ragged fence around the pool, and building a porch off the studio is a long-forgotten dream.

We were able to get a few hours of work in this weekend, and began installing trim around the new windows and doors in the studio to match the old:

The trim is 1 x 4 pine boards, with a drip cap above and a 1 1/4 inch detail strip just below the drip cap. Here's a photo of the detail (click to enlarge):

We managed to get both sets of windows and both doors done, but then our luck ran out, and it started to pour once again.

The gravel base and sand for the patio and pool deck will arrive this week, but if it doesn't stop raining, we'll have mountains o' soggy rock. But, the delivery's set, so there's nothing for it but to wait, hope, and once again pray for a dry weekend.

In the meantime, anyone know where we can get a hold of a couple of these?

June 13, 2003: Today, a quick examination of our patio and pool deck hole-in-the-ground with tape measure in hand, and a couple quick punches on the calculator, revealed that our little pool renovation project had snowballed... mushroomed... er, "blossomed" into a 1400 square foot pool and patio deck. S'ok, we told ourselves after a few looooong, deeeeeep breaths, we'll just call our trusty neighborhood stoneyard and talk to them about the materials needed. By the way, we love our local stoneyard. We've gotten our materials from them for every project we've needed rock or stone, from retaining walls to patios to entire courtyards of winding gravel paths and planting beds. If you're in the area and need stone materials, check them out at Rock Bottom Stoneyard. They're fun, they're funky, but best of all, they carry great product at a great price, and they know their stuff!

So we gave a call, and true to form, the chipper guy on the other end of the line said, "No problem! We can handle that. Lessee, 1400 square feet of two inches of gravel and two inches of sand comes to... clickclick... punchpunch...whirrrr... 14 tons of gravel and 14 tons of sand! When would you like it delivered?

Twenty. eight. tons. OhLordhavemercy, where's the tequila?

And where's the phone number for Bobcat Guy?

June 16, 2003: Wahoo! It's amazing what a single dry weekend will do, both for progress on the renovation and for our attitudes towards life.

The mountains o'gravel and granite dust arrived, on time and just right, as promised, in the back driveway. Bobcat Guy, who has earned our undying love and admiration, arrived on time and just right, as promised, Saturday morning to scoop and dump little bucketloads of gravel all over our soggy, pool-and-patio hole in the ground for us to spread. And spread we did, with rock rakes, shovels, and biceps and backs that were screaming in protest by the end of the day.

Then we went and rented a plate compactor. Pulled the starter string to fire that baby up, and chugchugchug, cha-chatter, cha-chatter, cha-chatter across the gravel we went. After about an hour and a half, and three broken molars, the gravel was compacted into a base as smoooooth as silk.

Bobcat Guy came on back, and dumped similar piles of granite dust around the entire deck and patio area. Unfortunately, because he couldn't drive over the compacted gravel, he couldn't distribute the sand as well, and we don't exactly have little piles to rake and distribute... it's more like smaller mountains o'sand:

But hey, the weather held, and we got more done in a weekend than we've been able to do all month, right? So we're not complaining.

Now we need to spread and compact the rest of the granite dust, and get a truckload of topsoil in to fill in the huge ruts, valleys and divots caused by moving heavy machinery across soaking wet ground. Hopefully we'll be able to do that this coming weekend... just in time for the flagstone to arrive Monday.

June 23, 2003: Well, we spoke too soon. Yup, rain, rain and more rain. It started Thursday night, and by Friday afternoon, four inches had fallen, half the county was flooded, roads were closed, and the yard was once again a soggy mess. The rain finally let up Saturday evening, and we were able to slog through the muck on Sunday long enough to get the rest of the granite dust spread for the patio and pool deck:

We didn't get near as much done as we'd hoped, of course, but at least it was something. The good news is, now that the granite dust is spread, we're finally able to get a good visual perspective on what the finished patio and deck shape will look like, and we're very happy with it. The other piece of good news is, as you can see in the photos, the pool plumbing project was a success! The pump and filtration system's been running without a hitch for a couple of weeks now, and the pool's crystal clear and perfect for a swim. Not that we can actually swim in it when it's 65 degrees outside and pouring rain, but at least our huge, water-filled hole in the ground looks good.

On another positive note, the flagstone arrived this morning, and it's beautiful. On a more daunting note, there's an awful lot of it. Now we just get to play our weekly waiting game (and obsessively check weather.com every ten minutes) to see if the weather will cooperate to let us start laying the stone...

return to journal index / continue to next month

home / about us / gallery / journal / links / mail