Porch rails complete!

Yesterday I took advantage of the time off to finish up a late summer project-my porch rails. They are a bit of a pain to install and more expensive than the wood ones I built ten years ago. Thankfully I'll never have to paint them and they will look ok for a long time.

Porch railings

This weekend I winterized the house putting away summer stuff. I ripped out the porch rails I built 13 years ago to install vinyl rails. No painting and they always look nice was a big factor in redoing them. This picture shows the first post installed then I ran out of time.

Boston Red Sox room

A few weeks ago I gave an idea to my friend that wanted to do a Red Sox themed room for his son. I though. It would be cool if he had the left field fence from Fenway Park- The Green Monster. I could see it sticking out of the wall a bit rather than painting it on the wall like a mural. My friend called me yesterday and I offered to start it with him. We got 2x3s, 2x4s and mdf board. We made a nailing frame and screwed it to the wall. This defined our space for the "fence" and gave us something to nail the mdf into. It took us a few hours, getting materials from home depot included. In the end the green monster sticks out from the wall two inches and once it's green it will really look good.

Front walkway

Last week I took four days to redo our front walkway. Eleven years ago I did interlocking pavers for the walkway to the patio. It was the first time I had ever down something like that. With a few under my belt now I felt confident I could get this one done quickly.

Day one we removed the grass and began to dig down to a depth I had already determined. Three shovels in I hit tree roots and that was the start of back breaking work. It took me the rest of the day to dig out.

Day two I had base rock and sand delivered and ordered the pavers. Two great companies to deal with. Really liked the guys from R. T. Masters, Webster, NY. I had them put it on the front yard. My son had already destroyed the grass playing baseball out front so I wasn't worried about the grass. My advice would be to get the pavers delivered as close as you can to the work. I then used a plastic wagon to bring piles of the different stone to the work area.

Day three I rented a plate tamper and began packing down the base material. I kept the rock wet and it really packed down. I should have laid the sand down and tamped that too but I had to return the machine. Not sure what the right thing to do whether to tamp the sand out just leave it loose. I began to lay pagers and got halfway finished. My kids came out to help me cart pavers or shovel Sand from time to time. On this project my son Jack seemed the most willing to help out. Nice to see him that the responsibility rather than older sister, Kate.
Day four it took me all day to lay the pavers. About eleven o'clock I saw I was running out of two sizes of pavers. I ran to R. T. Masters to throw them the mini van. Too heavy but they offered to bring me some within an hour. At home I kept working and the delivery showed up right in time-I had just run out of pavers. In the end I was able to finish by cutting only four pavers! Threw in poly-something sand to fill in the gaps and project complete.

Clean up was on another day and that stunk.

Yankee facade us up

Yankee Facade day two

Painted in the facade today. I have to do some clean up but I'm happy with it so far.

Yankee Bedroom

My son is a huge Yankee fan. I've created a template of the Yankee Stadium facade and I'm cutting it out of 1/4 inch MDF. Today I'm painting it white and later I will paint it to look like you could see through the openings.

Pool gate

Today was the final deck inspection for our pool deck. I started building the deck around this time last year--right after the pool was installed. To finish the deck stairs I had to complete the paver patio first. The deck has been up and in use since last summer but I still had to build a door and install the pool alarm.

At first I wanted to purchase a gate for the pool stairs but found that it difficult. Apparently stores don't see gates because of the different local codes for pool decks. I ended up making my gate from scratch. I used the same vinyl fencing product I put around the deck. It was a little challenging to get the gate the proper support with out making the door too heavy. It took some tweaking but I got it. With the spring loaded hinges and the top knob magnetic entry it fit all of the crazy regulations in the town code. If you are interested in my plans for the door contact me.

Workshop

Updated the "new" workshop. Cleaned up the messes from many projects going on to improve the house. Trying to set up all of my tools in my new space. Need to build base cabinets and install shelves. I installed a phone line.