Dave Arrives!

The construction weekend has finally arrived! Dave took off from Oklahoma City Friday night and rolled up to my house around 8:00 a.m. Saturday morning. He loves to drive at night and wanted to get started as soon as he got here. My friend Anita called at 7:30 a.m. to see what I was doing (how did she know I'd be up at 7:30 on a Saturday morning?!), so she came over and had breakfast with us.

So, without any sleep, Dave helped me skim about 2 inches of dirt out of the area where we are going to build the purgola so the portage stones will sit level with the sidewalk. We also had to level it out, which was quite a task. All those years of being under that landscaping fabric and rocks made the dirt super fine and fertile. I've got a pile of about 8-10 wheelbarrow loads that I might make a garden out of this fall!

As Dave and I had been discussing the plans for this construction project over the last few months, neither one of us were fond of sloping the whole thing away from the house to facilitate drainage, so we decided on a French drain. No, the French didn't invent it, some guy here in the States with the last name of French did! It's really just a moat around the house filled in with pipe and/or rocks to shunt the water away from the foundation. Up here in Colorado, we have crawl spaces under the house that you have to keep dry or else the concrete walls underground will start to crack. All that landscaping fabric under the rocks had been holding moisture against my house and the dirt was pretty wet underneath. No cracks in the crawlspace yet, but I didn't want to let it go on for too much longer.

After we got the French drain done, we dug the post holes and filled them with concrete and the anchors for the 4X4s that will hold the whole structure up. Yesterday was quite a lot of work- my back is feeling all that shoveling!

Today, we start cutting wood! Dave's here for a whole week, but we may get this thing done in a couple of days! Not to worry, lots more construction projects to do! We had to work around a light drizzle yesterday, so we'll see if the rain holds off today and let's us get the bulk of this project done. I hadn't seen Dave in three years, so we'll still have a lot of visiting to do even if it does rain. The last time I went to Oklahoma, I stayed with Suzanne and Chris (Dave's wife and son), but I didn't get to see Dave because he was deployed. Jim and Karla were also staying with them at that time while they were in the process of transferring to Great Lakes, IL. It's getting harder and harder as the years go on for all of us to get together on a regular basis. Dave retires from the Navy next year, so maybe we'll all get together again then.

Anyway, stay posted for more construction progress!