Since we're itching to introduce our fabulous new front stairs to the front of house, we've got a bit of work ahead of us.
First step (haha, get it)? To dig some holes so that we can concrete in some supports for the stairs.
But as you can see from all the little biro dots in the diagram above, we decided that we needed to plan the front yard properly so the stairs fitted in nicely, and so we didn't somehow end up with a metre-high gap between the height of the front yard and the first step.
Tom wasn't happy with the not-to-scale-ness of my drawing, so he decided to sit down and draw it properly. This is a much more accurate representation of our front yard and front fence. We're planning that when we eventually build in underneath the house we will make that a separate unit from upstairs so we can rent it out separately and get a bit of extra income to help pay off the mortgage. We can dream, right? Anyway, this means that we want to give upstairs and downstairs their own separate areas in the front yard so they don't have to be friends if they don't want to.
So, we've decided that we will have two front gates, and a fence running alongisde the stairs (you can see it on the right of them in the drawing) so that they each have their own exclusively-for-them yard.
We're also trying to be a bit sneaky and give them each the option to park an extra car in their half of the front yard (or just use that space as a little patio). This means we need a ridiculous number of fence posts in a fairly small area so we can have lots of gates. Practically the entire front fence will be gates.
So, how to dig all of these holes? Enter this guy again. He last made an appearance when we had to dig the holes to concrete in the fence posts for our last-minute-before-hopping-on-a-plane fence.
I've named him Mr Dragonfly. Because as you can see, he's got a long body, and two big wings that the operators have to grip onto for dear life, lean all their weight on so it actually drills a hole, and hope their wrists don't get broken when it hits a rock and jerks wildly to one side.
It's not a fun machine (but then again, when are machines ever nice to us?), but at about $80 to hire it for the weekend it sure beats a bigger, better, much more expensive alternative like a Kanga.
So, with our only allowed-to-make-noise weekend day disappearing fast, and Tom's to-scale drawing in hand, we got cracking. Or drilling.
We positioned random sticks we found lying around in each of the places where a hole needed to be dug, and got them all done in record time.
Here is one of the holes. Is it better than any hole you've ever seen before?
You can just see Tom and Daniel in the background here digging our last hole. I don't have any other photos of that process I'm afraid, since I was way too busy actually helping and trying not to lose function in my wrists at the same time.
Can you spot Allie watching on above? She really loved the noise of the machine, but was trapped behind her houdini-preventing fence.
We put up our trusty (and totally impenetrable) safety fence, which Allie had to inspect carefully to make sure it was up to scratch...
Yep, we're all about the security here!
The next day, on our no-noise-making Sunday, we decided to start concreting in our fence posts the quiet way (aka the HARD way) - that is, by hand.
So Tom got the oh-so-joyous job of hand mixing the concrete in the wheelbarrow, at an average of two wheelbarrows of concrete per hole. It's hard work. And we don't recommend it. But for the sake of not getting fined by the council (and our concrete mixer machine is broken anyway - surprise surprise, another machine that doesn't like us), we decided to forge on.
Then I realised something important. Remember the metre-high gap between yard and step issue we're trying to avoid? Well since we've decided that we'll build up our front yard height a little bit in order to bring it a bit closer to the height that our garages will be at, we were going to have an issue that our concrete would be pretty far underground.
No problem, I'm full of good ideas! That Tom then has to implement...
We decided to chop off the bottom of our paint tins (the plastic ones, at least) so we could sit them at the top of each of our holes and thereby raise the concrete height a bit.
Tom decided that he really liked using a saw to cut stuff, so tried using it to open the packaging our new hose nozzle came in as well. Not quite as successfully.
And so we continued concreting. Well, Tom continued mixing the concrete. I was the water spraying person, a job I was content to apply myself to wholeheartedly.
Well, wholeheartedly amidst also wholeheartedly throwing the ball that Allie kept dropping through the gaps in the fence for me.
And now for the proper explanation of why my brilliant chopped-off paint tin idea was really necessary, since you might be wondering why it matters if the concrete for fence posts is buried below ground height. You would think it would be strong, possibly even stronger if it's deeper.
It's because of these guys.
Yeah I know, great explanation. More specifically, these guys are these steel things that Tom is very carefully positioning in our paint tin concrete hole so that they are level in all directions and not going to sink into the concrete.
These steel things (I have no idea what their real name is) are an option for building fence posts that we've never used before. In the past, we've always just stuck timber fence posts straight in the concrete, chocked them up so they stay as straight as possible, and left it at that, but this time around we decided to be a bit cleverer (yes, that's totally a word!) and not spend as much on timber, by first concreting in these steel guys. The timber post can then be bolted in between the two prongs that stick up and it should be solid as a rock.
Considering how pricey nice long lengths of thick hardwood timber are, this is a great option. Not to mention the fact that the steel things are designed to be placed so the little horizontal bit is basically level with ground height, keeping the bottom of the timber post slightly off the ground. Great for stopping termites from climbing!
It did, however, put us under a fair bit of pressure to make sure they were concreted in at exactly what our future yard height will be at. Thus the necessity for my paint tin (and plant pot) extension. And the string line you can just see in this picture, which we positioned at exactly what we're hoping will be ground height.
The tins and pots turned out to be quite handy, since we could pop a piece of timber across the top of them and use that to support the steel thing, and thereby prevent it (being the steel thing) from sinking down into the concrete that may have been a little bit sloppy because I was extra enthusiastic with my water-spraying job.
This process took a LONG time. Getting the steel thingies completely level, and straight, and lined up, and the correct distance apart so that our fabulous staircase will fit in between them is a fiddly, annoying business.
So here are three out of four of our steel thingies for the stair landing concreted in (with an extra one to the right for the future fence between upstairs' and downstairs' yards. We had to get that one in because the hole is right next door to the one for the landing, so the concrete spilled over.
And here they are in relation to the front door way way way up in the air. As you can see from the plan at the top of this post, we'll have some steps going sideways along the front of the house, then the landing (which is what we're concreting in posts for), and then more stairs running forwards to the front gate.
Since Tom was on a roll, we also managed to concrete in the posts that the two front gates will hinge off.
And a couple more along the front fence, where we're going to need to have a retaining wall that steps down in height, because our block slopes from right to left.
As always, Allie thinks it's all a big yawn.
We're getting closer, but there's still a way to go before we will actually be able to walk directly from our front yard to our front door! And I'm terrified that we've made some awful miscalculation somewhere along the way with our measurements and that we're going to have to start from scratch when the staircase won't fit. Terrifed, I tell you!
Then again, we've quintuply (also definitely a word) checked - as in checked and checked again and again and again and again that we're on the right track, so theoretically we should have no problems and be able to officially call ourselves geniuses...genii? Fingers crossed!
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