Memorial weekend was one of those power weekends, even though it started out raining, and the patio stones we had meticulously cleared two weekends ago now looked like this:

Mom and I thought we’d get creative with the shade fabric/curtains to try and keep the rain out.

This worked about how you would expect, which is to say not at all.

So instead we decided to go steal some stone from the place my family used to own, then auctioned off, then bought back again. Technically I wasn’t entirely sure if it was stealing, but I did have to 4wd over the berm again. And it was entertaining turning Mom into a Master Thief. After we got done loading the wastebaskets fill of stone in the the Xterra, Mom looks up to the top of the old building and says “Ohmygod, is that a camera?!” And the paranoia is kind of infectious, because as I drive away I look up and say “Ohmygod, is it following us?!” Okay. It was totally a spotlight on top of the building, but obviously the blonde took over for a minute. We got pretty hystericall when Mom turned to me and said “I was JUST thinking the same thing!”

By the time I got back to my house something mysterious had appeared in my back yard…

My FIRST birthday present!

MysteryMan was all nerved out about what to get me for my birthday, so I told him just to pick out a couple of nice shade plants for the back yard. Obviously he suffers from the same problem I do… once I see all those beautiful plants, I need them all! He did an excellent job.

Then the three of us set to actually getting something done around the house. Three hours later we were ready for this:

We went with the shovel it in dry then sprinkle it with the hose method for grouting the flagstone… which worked pretty good.

This was Saturday night… notice, unfinished bench in right corner, unfinished flagstone, unfinished everything.

Sunday brought slightly better weather. I spent a lot of the morning in this position…

…up to my elbows in cement dust. (I have half a dozen pf these pics because Mom thought my knees were “so cute” she just kept taking pictures of me. Mothers… what can you do?)

By the end of the day… whooped!

Monday was when everything really took shape.

We finished off the flagstone… MysteryMan had a very conventional way of checking for level:

My mother? Not so much:

The bench covering that ugly bid of exposed foundation was taken care of:

After several hours arguing the laws of physics and wood with MysteryMan.

Again, Mom insists on doing things unconventionally… such as staining the bench.

Well, that’s one way to get those hard-to-reach spots!

After twelve hours of hard labor, we were finally able to move the table I bought last year onto the finished patio:

My new favorite place to be!

Since I had everyone over yesterday for my birthday (and my grandmothers husband’s birthday), I had the whole house cleaned and ready to go. (I did get the curtains hung on the pergola, some new pictures hung in the house) but oddly enough…

Everyone wanted to be on the patio!

I got some nice planters and birdfeeders and in general “outdoor” things from everyone who stopped by, and I need to get a picture of the finished pergola from the outside. But for the most part, this section of the back yard is DONE. Now I just need to stain the fence and get to planting!

I’ve only been awake for about 45 minutes today, and so far I’m not sure which part of my day has been the most fabulous: 1.)  The seven phone calls between 7:30 and 10am, 2.) Waking up to a gang full of motorcyclists growling down the street (and then realizing my father was one of them and currently parked on his Harley in my front yard), or 3.) This…

For the last three months I’ve been warning every single person who helps with the patio about accidentally crushing their fingers in between two pieces of flagstone, and how– as my father once succinctly put it– you can’t afford to lose a finger, you’re not even married yet. Yes. The fifty-year-old with his shiny new mid-life-crisis-yellow Harley told me that.

Lucky for him I can’t bend three of my fingers right now to make a proper fist.

Actually, it’s mostly superficial, unless you count the mortal wound to my pride. And what can you do?

On to bigger and brighter things.

My mother and grandmother stopped over to put in a little time on the back yard, and I couldn’t let a little thing like some bloody knuckles get me down.  If I haven’t said it before, I am eternally grateful to be surrounded by such awesome women, this is why…

Well what the heck is this? It almost looks like a back yard and not a war zone… But wait. If the flagstone isn’t jumbling up the backyard, then where is it?

*Gasp*

I think the powers that be in the universe felt bad about the bad joke that was my morning, and this is what I got in return:

Would you look at that? It almost looks done.

Make no mistake, it is not done. But for the first time since I started this project I see an end in sight.

JUMP TO THE FINAL CHAPTER of The Pergola Saga: Badass Pergola COMPLETE!

Today I was surrounded by kick ass women… but before I get to that, let me tell you about the trailer.The big plan for today was to hitch a trailer up to my Xterra and go pick up a half a dozen more big pieces of flagstone. I didn’t have much of a plan beyond that because, the way I figured it, I only had about at 15% chance of driving a trailer ten miles around the city and actually surviving. (Whether or not I was to meet my demise in a vehicular accident, or because I gave myself a heart attack, remained to be seen.) I’ll pretty much give anything a try once, especially if it is something that will help get one of my projects done, but I was really (let me emphasize that again) really dreading the whole trailer-hauling thing.

Really.

I’m just not a good driver, and I really felt like I could have used a spotter (or chauffer) for this kind of thing. However. I also felt like a big sissy. My mother drove a trailer hooked up to her Mirage across the country forgodsake, you think I could handle a couple of pieces of flagstone a quarter-mile to my house. Plus I really didn’t want to bother anyone before noon on a Saturday.

I’ll spare you the detials of hooking a (really small) trailer up the ShortBus. (It’s not my fault I drive a schoolbus yellow SUV…) Although no less than seven people called my on my drive from picking up the trailer to the stone place, to make sure I hadn’t maimed/killed anyone or died of a panic attack yet. Thanks to everyone who called.

Everthing on that front and getting the trailer with the flagstone to the house worked out fine. (More trailer drama later in the story)…

I get tons of help actually unloading the trailer from E and Mom, who are some of the awesome-ist ladies ever. E spent nine hours here today alternately helping me with the flagstone and working on her awesome table. She kicks serious ass, and I’m taking her out for drinks later to show my appreciation.

I got all but 5 stones of my retaining wall mortared in, and we make some good progress on the flagstone-ing bit. Also got E’s table grouted and all of the base work finished, stained, and polyeurathaned. And I got my front yard raked.

About an hour ago we decide to call it quits, clean up, and meet out later for a drink. The only problem? There is a big-ass piece of flagstone in the trailer still, and the trailer is still attached to my car, and there is no way after 9 hours either of us can lift it. E says “why don’t you just pull out of the driveway, turn around, and we can back the trailer in?” Uh. We found out why that wasn’t anywhere near as easy to do as it was to say. And yes, we knew all about the “turn the opposite way than you normally would when backing up” rule. Let me tell you what a think about that rule.

Eff. That.

About fifteen minutes (and it’s pitch black out, by the way) of hearing E going “Turn the wheel to the right, no to the left! Go straight. Just pull into the damn grass.” The two ladies who live acoss the street decided we obviously needed help… so then there were four of us taking alternate turns at the wheel trying to get the damn thing backed into the driveway. Uh.

All I need to say is this. It took an hour.

We did an hundred-and-seventeen point turn to get that sucker backed in, and we still couldn’t get it straight. I’m telling you… it’s a defective trailer.

And I really really owe my neighbors. Everyone I know kicks ass today, and that’s all I have to say about that, except…

It’s time for a margarita!

JUMP TO PART XIV of The Pergola Saga: A Little Oops.

That’s the story for the weekend.Friday night I got a bug up my butt about getting something done, so I decided to start on the bench that will cover the concrete ledge/foundation so that Moms and I could get in some serious laying-of-flagstone on Saturday. I dig my holes approximately where I want the posts. They aren’t going to be seen so I wasn’t real worried about level so much as I was checking the see if they were in a straight line. (I even stuck a couple of stakes in the ground and strung a line to make real sure I these 2×6′s were straight.) I missed a major step here, which I didn’t find out about for another 24 hours…

So. I did the half-assed method of quickcrete-ing them in: Pour in dry quickcrete and let the hose sit on it for a minute. Eh. It worked.

Saturday I started building up the bench at 8am.

Looks straight, good and level, eh? Yes, yes, it is all of those things… but by 11 am I found my fatal mistake.

It’s not effing square to the house.

How do I forget about something like square. Complete effing brain fart, so the bench is 2″ closer to the house on one side than it is on the other. This is why I should start projects fresh in the morning and not at 7pm on a friday night.

Now I have the Crooked bench on the Crooked patio attached to the Crooked house that the girl who makes Crooked brooms built. Great.

JUMP TO PART XIII of The Pergola Saga: Every Day Is An Adventure…

 …well, it ain’t China, but it’s something.First, let me just say, every muscle in my body is incredibly pissed off at me right now. (I had a dream I was back in my days as a dancer, so I must have been having muscle pain in my sleep as well. lol.)  There’s no big saga about this weekend really… I picked up the mortar friday night, so we got started bright and early Saturday.

Step one was laying out the wall dry, then we got down to the fun stuff…

These were between 25-35 lbs a piece, but neither of us had any problem with the lifting. (After those 200 pound posts, and shoveling 6000 lbs. of material out of the driveway, how could we?) My big issue, that never quite got worked out, was the leveling… I underestimated how hard it would be to keep irregular shaped “blocks” level. If a mason looked at this wall, he would laugh in my face. lol

Super Mason! (Don’t mind my ghetto-chic mason outfit, this was all that was left in my closet. I haven’t done laundry in like… uh, nevermind.)

Now, I’m not naming names, but one of us has a new dude and was out a little too late Friday night…

Mom? Mom!

Teasing aside, other than lounge around and use the new wall as a foot-rest, mom also got that whole pallet of stone unloaded and spread out on the driveway… and besides, if anyone deserves a guy that wants to keep her out to 3 AM, it’s my mom.

As a break from the mudding and stacking we took a little time to spread out the stone to backfill the wall/patio area… Then I couldn’t help myself and had to put down a little sand…

And mom and I heaved the fist piece of flagstone into place:

Those pieces of flagstone? Not light. We moved a bunch of similar sized pieces into the back yard, then came across a few that were three times this size

We all had to check out the first section of finished patio…

Verdict: Good for thinking. Good for afternoon naps… Not Bad! Not bad at all!

Sunday I was flying solo, so there’s not a whole lot of fun pictures. I got another five foot section of wall done, and then my body totally craped out on me. I sat down and just for the life of me could not get back up again. I felt kind of like my drill must when the battery is completely drained but I still keep pushing the button and trying to get another turn out of the screw…

Here’s the end result of the weekend:

It’s a pretty good amount of wall… I’ve got another five feet to do over to the right there, and then three or four feet back to the house.

Hopefully I’ll be able to get at least that much done before Thursday… after that I’m off for a week for a wedding on the beach! Nothing like a beach to recharge the batteries…

JUMP TO PART XII of The Pergola Saga: Crooked Bench

Yesterday the people in my life rocked. 

Holy Crapola! Where did all the material go?

Well, the Shovel Fairy (previously the Master of The Hatchet) stopped by when I was at work and moved about 80% of the sand pile to the back by the garage (that’s the darker material) all by herself in 98-degree weather.

I went almost directly after work to go –horror of all horrors– bathing suit shopping. No woman should ever have to look at herself under fluorescent dressing room lights in a string bikini. <shudder> I realized too, just what a number the mosquitoes have done to my legs this year… it looks like I have some sort of pox. Ugh. It took me two hours to complete that dreaded task. 

So I was home an shoveling by 8pm… (when it was blessedly cooler… and by that I mean, oh, 95 degrees) I had the rest of the sand pile, and about half the stone pile moved by 9:15 when another Shovel Fairy stopped in… and this one was huge. That was a big help because if the wheelbarrow has more than 15 shovel-fulls in it at a time, I can’t move the thing without tipping it over… the Big Shovel Fairy did not have such a problem. We had the rest of the pile cleared out in 20 minutes.

My driveway is looking less and less like a construction zone, but I can’t say the same for the back yard:

But it’ll be worth it when we can back the truck all the way up to the backyard to offload the stone. Next problem? Now that I’m mortaring the joints on the stone wall, I need to pour a concrete footer instead of the tamped down stone… more shoveling anyone?  

I also spent a good part of the day trying to get these babies from the rock shop to my back yard. Since everyone else fell through on me at the last minute (I swear, men are never sensitive to the timeframe of a womans project… sometimes I think every guy I know is hardwired to reassure me to the very last minute that they have everything under control– which they don’t– just to sabotage my plans.) I would be peeved, but I’m not. Because after I shanghied one of my own drivers from half way across the city… this is what is in my driveway:

That’s for the retaining wall, of course, and this huge pieces are for the top:

Guess what I’m doing this weekend????

I never mentioned earlier that Moms & I did get at least 2/3 of the footer poured last night. So we’re ready to rock and roll first thing tomorrow. Fingers crossed, I have big news to report come Monday. I’m gearing up to shoot out of here at 5 and get some more concrete and mortar!!!! (Who gets this excited about dirt? I do.)

JUMP TO PART XI of The Pergola Saga- The Great Wall of…

That’s me. It was 97-degrees and had to be 100% humidity, but dammed if I wasn’t going to get my trench dug. Well, okay, first things first.

Moms and I managed– barely– to get up the last big piece of lattice.

All that’s left for this bad boy is the archway. Yes!

Then I got on to the trench digging. It’s a foot wide, 7″ deep, and 25 feet long…

And, the rest of it…

That’s the outline of where the raised patio is going to go.

I’ve got some sand and gravel being delivered today, then it’s shoveling, shoveling, shoveling, for the rest of the week. Hopefully my stone will be delivered sometime in the next few days. Then you get fun pictures of mom and I trying to lift BFS’s (Big Fucking Stones). Do you know how much one piece of flagstone weighs? At least 80 lbs. That’s how much.

I figure I’ll have a patio just in time to sit on it and watch the first snow.

LATER THAT DAY….

This 8000 lbs of material is currently sitting in my driveway:

Got about a third of the trench filled in and tamped down. It’s more of a pain in the butt than it should be because I’m using a smaller stone (which I have in abundance in the yard here at work, and get for free) that needs to be tamped down more.

Bub puts in his two cents, as usual.

Looks like I’m getting my stone for the patio tomorrow… which means I need to brush up on (and by “brush up on” I mean, learn entirely) masonry skills like, oh, I don’t know, how to make a proper mortar joint. Whoa, fun. I can get the stuff tomorrow, problem is I need to have all of that material out of my driveway first. I’ll be spending quality time with the shovel tonight… that’s for sure.

Adios, amigos.  

JUMP TO PART X of The Pergola Saga- No one likes to see a girl shovel alone.

Get this. The pergola is rapidly approaching completion. (The tile in the kitchen, however, is not. But that’s another story for another day.)

So…Saturday was “Get The Roof On the Pergola” Day, which meant hauling 8 2×6′s up and down the ladder all day, and cutting 16 notches… which doesn’t seem like it should day six hours, but it did.

One down, 15 to go…

It’s getting so as I just don’t feel right if I’m not perched a dozen feet off the ground for at least half the day…

(Hey, at least we know it’s stable.)

After a whole day of this, we are…

DONE!

Late Saturday night my good friend Erin and I were seduced by the sirens call of margarita’s at the Mexican place nearby. She was telling me about how she was trying to tell another friend about my pergola but she couldn’t think of what it was called. She says “the only word I could think of was chalupa!” I’m like “as in Taco bell, do-you-want-sour-cream-with-that, chalupa?” Yes, apparently. One and a half margaritas in we found this utterly hilarious. So it’s pretty safe to say Erin will never refer to my pergola as anything other than a Chalupa from here on out.

Even with a two margarita hangover, I was out bright and early Sunday. First project of the day was deterring the constant waterfall of water that floods into the basement every time it so much as sprinkles out. This is the problem…

What you’re looking at here is the view of outside world as seen from the inside of my basement. Yeah, wonder where the water’s coming in? (These were uncovered when I had the old concrete pad removed.)

One tube of door/window/roof sealer later….

My diagnoses was that the last hundred years have taken their toll on the angle-iron here, and it has completely rusted out in places which is why the water is free to enter my humble abode as it pleases. All of this is also going to be covered by the custom wood bench I’ll get to after the patio is in. Isolated T-storms are on the schedule for every day in the next week, so we’ll see if that does the trick.

Mom took to touching up some areas that needed a little extra stain while I worked on the other lattice piece.

(Perching must be genetic.)

By the end of the day I had the second big piece of lattice completed. All that’s left is to hang it up, which is definitely a two person job, and mom had left by the time I got it done. Today, hopefully.

What that means is all that’s left for the pergola is setting on my decorative copper corners, and building the archway. I’ll be on to the masonry work next weekend!

In not-so-exciting news, there are currently two men (with about seven teeth between the both of them) hanging unstained trim in my kitchen. It kind of makes me want to kill myself because I’m going to have to stain it once it’s already on the white walls. Does that sound like fun? No. No it does not. But it will be finished so it’s hard to complain. (Kind of.) Actually, to be perfectly honest, I wish these men were anywhere else in the world than at my house right now, but I’m trying to keep a positive outlook. I’ve had nothing but misery when someone other than myself does work on my house. One of these idiots saw my wood in the driveway and asked if I was building a playhouse for kids. I jabbed my finger towards the pergola and said “No, I built that.” I’m going to have this sinking feeling in my chest all day until I see what kind of havoc they’ve wreaked on my kitchen. There will probably be some tears involved and my father and I will get in a huge fight because even though he comes over to my house maybe once ever two months, the idea that the trim isn’t up the in kitchen pisses him off, and that’s why I have two men who wreak of alcohol and condescension doing whateverthehell they want to my house right now.

Actually, I’m getting kind of pissed off the more I talk about it, so I’m going to try an think happy thoughts about my pergola/chalupa instead.

Hey, at least it was a productive weekend, right?

EDIT: Okay, I just couldn’t take it… ran home at lunch and was like, “guys thank you so much, but can you please just cut the baseboard and not attach it, because I do not want to stain it when it’s on the wall.” Luckily they had only done the door frame, which was half stained anyway, and the toe-kick, which was already finished. Whew. I can exhale now.

JUMP TO PART IX of The Pergola Saga- Digger of Trenches

…but even I am human.

WEEKEND:

On one hand, I do love having a healthy active social life… on the other hand, this generally takes me away from my projects and power tools. So this weekend wasn’t as productive as the last few have been, but we did manage to get a little work done on the Pergola. Got the 2×6 up in back and started measuring out where the roof slats are going to go. Moms had surgery on her shoulder the day before this… you can see it really slowed her down.

Those 2×6′s are going to be notched a couple of inches to fit down over the lattice piece. As far as attaching it goes, the jury is still out as to whether I just j use a big-ass deck screw and screw down from the top, glue it (the notches will hold pretty tight by themselves), or try something rigged up with the air-nailer. What I really need is like a double-sided nail… do they make those?

Anyway we ran into a little problem with the spacing, which we ingeniously solved with the decorative copper spindle you see on the left.

COPPER CAP

Papa brought up a good point Sunday though, which is that the 2×4 all of these roof-slat 2×6′s are resting on may start to bow over time. I debated for a long time about whether or not to use a 2×6 there, but aesthetically the 2×4′s look better. Crap. Papa then said to attach another 2×4 to the back of it to give it more support. Not at all a bad idea, but they are centered on that other little piece of 2×4 and I don’t (aesthetically) have room to attach another 2×4 to the back of it. It’s going to take a little pondering.

TUESDAY: 3 up, 8 to go…

Okay, I’m done whining about my full and active life… but that’s only because I got to hole up in my house last night with my power tools. As penance for my unproductive weekend I put up two more 2×6′s last night. That means only 8 more…

(The three on the left are the set ones… spacing etc is off on the rest right now.)

Tried to brighten it up a bit so you can see the notching. Ever since I cut out those wooden gears for that clock I’ve become a champion notch-cutter.

While I was standing up on the ladder banging at these, the neighbors on the other side of the privacy fence were having a party. They kept calling up to me ”Heeeyyyyy, you want a margarita?” “Heeeeeyyyyyy, your turn to do a shot!” They were very entertaining. I was like “Heeeeyyyyy, do you want me to fall off this ladder and break my neck?” Alcohol and power tools don’t mix.

My house is still a Master Disaster and I’m trying to get a grip on it, so my plan is to alternate nights after work this week either putting up a few 2×6′s or shoveling the junk out of a room or two.  

JUMP TO PART VIII of The Pergola Saga- Rapidly Approaching Completion. (Or Not.)

Pergola!

Uh, almost.

Other than the fact that just about every step of this project takes twice as long as I expect it to, we got through last weekend without any major issues. That means: More pics, less talk.

The one woman staining crew:

The one woman post trimming crew:

If you’re wondering, that’s the “I really don’t want to fall off this ladder and break my neck” face that I’m making. Attractive, I know, but hey it worked. Another way I assured myself I’d stay put on the top of that ladder is the luggage strap you see slung over my right shoulder. When I was using the other saw I would swing it around the post and clip it to my belt loops which gave me a little stability. Mark the Neighbor said I looked like a lumberjack. Ha. Ha.

It took almost all of Saturday to get those posts trimmed down and about half of the roof 2×6′s stained…. here’s a three-piece mock-up of the roof:

Sunday I started on the first piece of lattice…

(That took about four hours, mostly due to crappy battery life on my power tools, and the fact that I had to extend that lattice –which only comes in 8ft sections– to ten feet. Can’t even tell, can ya?)

This project was supervised by this little guy. He was about as big as the palm of my hand:

Moms and I stained that lattice piece which, because it was lattice, took about two and a half hours. Plus we finished all of these:

Getting the lattice piece into place wasn’t easy AT ALL but a strategically placed 2X4 helped us leverage the thing up and hold it into place. One of the crappy things about being a girl (and not having an extra 100 lbs packed on me)  is that it’s hard to stand on a ladder and get enough leverage to get the wood screws in. About  a third of the time I end up stripping the screw, and I haven’t found any good work-around for this.  Usually I try to screw everything in on the ground so that I can lean all of my weight onto it.

Despite all of that, though…

Looks slightly better than my drawing, no?

JUMP TO PART VII of The Pergoal Saga- Not as Badass As I Would Like…