Riding the Pine

Not just yet, but we're closer. Here's what we have after working on Monday night:

We were originally having issues deciding how we were going to get these things to fit. If we locked them down before they were all cut, we had less flexibility to move them to make them easier to fit, but if we didn't we were trying to match floating boards with floating boards. We ended up splitting the difference and just attaching each bench top with two wood screws so they'll still be easy enough to remove before we finalize.

Working our way around. We're still just cutting these and tacking them down as we go. This is about where we stopped. We got the last piece cut, but it needs a little adjustment to fit properly. We'll get that done here very shortly. Then we'll also put down some glue on these bad boys and really screw them down so they don't go anywhere. Then at some point in the future, we're going to put tile on them. Woot!

Also, I don't know if you remember me saying anything about this in the past, but our sprinkler system is short one valve in the control box in the front. We always thought there would be one in the back yard, but had no idea where it would be. Well we found it:

Just sitting in them iddle of a big patch of rocks. I stepped on it and noticed the sound was off, so I dug it up a little and voila! Good to know where it is, at least.

Thanks for reading!

Raised just a little bit more

Well my dad came over this weekend and we raised our beds just a bit more. Still not all the way done as the weather kinda scared us away, but much closer still. You'll see it all, through the magic of digital photography.

Getting ready to go. Got the new timbers, just need to stack them up on there and hope it all works out so we don't have any giant gaps anywhere.

To assist, I have my new toy. It's awesome. I don't think it was designed with work this heavy in mind (driving 10" screws into 6x6 chunks of cedar) but it performed admirably. I like the size and weight of it for sure.

One more layer in place. Still needs to be screwed down, though.

Stupid natural materials, being all organic and not square. Looks like this is a job for a truly ancient tool that I really have no good reason to own. Thankfully, my loving wife got it for me as a gift a few years ago. I have found many occasions to use it when nothing else will quite do the job.

This is a draw knife. I don't remember if I've used it on the blog before, but it is a heck of a handy tool for shaping wood in a quick way. Also invaluable for making longbows, if you're into that.

Scrape scrape. Had to get that end cut down enough for the next layer to sit properly. We'll certainly have small gaps, but we can't have giant ones.

Much better.

We also noticed that some of the screws were hitting their collar and stopping, so we decided to use an auger bit to countersink them just a touch.

So there we go. All four courses, including the one that is now completely buried. Did I mention that each of these timbers is like $40? They weren't labeled when I went to get the first batch so I didn't quite realize just how expensive they are. Next time, we're using 4x4 cedar, which is $10 per timber. Seriously. These look nice, but they don't look that nice. I would have to use another 2-3 courses to get the right height, but even then we'd end up with a whole lot less money in the project, not to mention how much easier they would be to cut and everything.

And now we get to work on the bench top. This isn't going to be easy, unfortunately. We're trying to match wood with wood when we know none of it is straight, level or square, simply by its very nature.

Made a guide for the circular saw. This really helped get straighter cuts. I can follow a line with the best of them, but the circular saw is a mighty beast to have to keep on a straight line diagonally across a 2x10 board.

We got one corner done and had to stop with the wind picking up and clouds rolling in. We've got too many power tools out there to deal with much rain.

I'll post more progress as soon as I can. Thanks for reading!