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Post by Ken on May 2, 2020 16:12:42 GMT -6
Perfect day to finish cutting stone, nice mild temp and a stiff breeze blowing to carry the stone dust away. No respirator needed. This feels a long way from the 90 degree july days without a hint of breeze and being covered in sweat and stone dust. Pics when it's done. I'm looking forward to seeing it. I wired some new lights in the shed, cut the grass, vacuumed the pool, pressure-washed the mulch residue and then the pool deck. I cleaned the grill too. I also sent my latest beer to a keg and harvested the yeast (940). I'm going to fire up the grill soon for some ribeyes and after dinner I will filter water and weigh out grains for a brewday tomorrow. Tomorrow is my bday so after the brewday I get to smoke some ribs too. I might hang out in my BBQ area, smoke the ribs, crank some music, drink some beer and maybe even have a birthday cigar. Cheers beerheads.
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Post by drez on May 2, 2020 20:13:40 GMT -6
Digsafe here and on private property many will not mark. At least that is how it was when I worked for Mass Electric. Mark from the equipment to the edge or the property and that was it. You would think they would mark to the meter, doesn't the meter belong to the utility? For an underground service, the meter socket and conductor is the customers. The utility just owns and sets the meter.
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matt6150
Full Member
Patient Zero
Posts: 142
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Post by matt6150 on May 3, 2020 9:15:10 GMT -6
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Post by jkor on May 3, 2020 9:45:23 GMT -6
I pulled a bunch of stumps that size two years ago, it doesn't seem like much but fecking hell it was a lot of work. Prolly a few hours, tops, with a excavator but with me and my tractor it was a solid weeks worth spread over a few months. There was a lot of other clearing and grading involved in the process but it wasn't easy work. You would think the tractor would make easy work of it but probably half them the tractor couldn't budge at all and I had to hand dig and cut the main roots. Fecking PITA. Anyway, here's the current status of the patio. Just leveling left to do, no idea how long that will take, feels like it could take a long time. This is where I wish I had fit and leveled everything at the same time because it would have been broken up in little chunks. Leveling the whole thing in one go is going to feel like a marathon. At the very end of the day the wind died down and the stone dust was making a nice little scene as it hung over the yard.
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matt6150
Full Member
Patient Zero
Posts: 142
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Post by matt6150 on May 3, 2020 12:55:47 GMT -6
Yeah I don't expect his tractor to get all of them. But he seems pretty confident in his abilities. I will take what I can get. Someone down the street has a stump grinder and will do the rest for pretty cheap.
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Post by jkor on May 3, 2020 16:45:21 GMT -6
Having my first sit on the finished patio. Well, at least the 6'x8' section i finished today. i got maybe a half day of real work in on it. Probably 2-3 full days to finish. I can see the finish line! It's nice because you see the finished product as you go, it's motivating. Not to pat myself on the back too much but it looks fecking awesome. It really looks like i pictured it in my head. Makes me more motivated to start the second one. Which is kind of a big deal because most projects that drag on for a full year tend to be the kind you don't want to do again.
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Post by jkor on May 3, 2020 18:39:01 GMT -6
Progress for today...
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Post by jkor on May 5, 2020 5:41:01 GMT -6
I'm trying to pick away at this a few stones at a time, an hour here and there. It's easier work to pick up and put down than the cutting and fitting. As i was moving along yesterday i came to one of the largest stones on the patio and it was already perfectly level with the grade. That's the first one I haven't had to touch. I must've looked like a Muslim praying to the east out there when I realized I wasn't going to have to level a 100lb stone. In retrospect, putting down the bedding material first was a bad idea. Everything I read said to do it that way but with the variability of the stones I have to take away/add for every single stone. I'm just replicating the leveling work I already did with the bedding when I put it down last year. I spent a fair amount of effort getting the thickness even across the entire patio but now that feels like completely wasted work. I probably should've realized that at the time but i was going by the book. That's another few hours i'll get back on the next one.
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Post by chils on May 5, 2020 6:10:28 GMT -6
Following this closely due to my need to do my 50ft stone walkway. Tractor bucket being online is gonna be essential to this.
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Post by jkor on May 5, 2020 6:42:46 GMT -6
After this is done the next patio area will have a walkway with it. For the walkway I'm planning to do a more spaced out layout with ~4" between the stones and let the grass fill in between the stones then when it transitions to the patio area I'll go back to the tight spacing with stone dust joints.
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Post by jkor on May 11, 2020 9:10:09 GMT -6
I got my bucket teeth installed Saturday and started moving the fill from behind my basketball area. The neighbor wants some fill to raise a low area in their yard to so it works perfectly for me as I didn't really have a good spot to put the fill. The plan is to bring the entire area behind the court (~10ft back from the edge of the court) to the same level as the court then plant some lawn back there. the stone wall will run allong the left side of the court (opposite the patio), you can see some of the wall stone stacked up behind the court. I had cut away at the embankment where the new wall will go 2 years ago prior to getting the area paved and there are so many weeds and roots in it that there has been virtually no erosion in the two years it's been exposed. The wall will essentially be decorative since the embankment apparently needs no support. Untitled by JKoravos, on Flickr by JKoravos, on Flickr Untitled by JKoravos, on Flickr
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Post by jkor on May 18, 2020 7:09:25 GMT -6
This probably doesn't look too much different than the last few but i've got about 2/3rds of the way through the finishing. It's taken about two days so one more solid day and I'll have the patio finished. Then comes finishing the wall, probably another 2 days there. Then I'm going to add some solar lighting and call it done. I bought one strand of these solar lights to see how they looked and I really like them. The look nice and they stay on all night after a day of charging. Similar angle from a few weeks ago:
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Post by jkor on May 21, 2020 5:24:16 GMT -6
Because I want to keep extending this project forever...I decided to scrap the idea of sinking some galvanized fence posts in the lawn at the corners to hang the lights, instead I'm going to pour posts into the corners of the patio itself using 4x4 PT posts. I have a decorative router pattern that I'm going to put in the posts (which matches the pattern on the posts of the grand staircase in my foyer) which will also carry over to the fence posts on the fence that I'm putting up later this year...*coughnextyearcough*. Here's my pattern test piece. I'm going to use the piece of Delrin I was going to send to Ken to make the router guide so i'm glad I didn't give that away!
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Post by jkor on May 23, 2020 7:31:22 GMT -6
Full test piece. I made some adjustments in the routing pattern. I'll paint it white when the PT dries out. It's a little difficult to see the detail with the wood grain.
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Post by jkor on May 23, 2020 10:45:22 GMT -6
Sliding jig to make the fluting in the posts:
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