Well with Ron having knee surgery and going to be on crutches or a walker all summer, and with us NOT getting any younger, I decided to build a handicap ramp..with attached decking.
The front porch we had was converted to an enclosed porch with plexiglass, but we had left the railings up on it..today Joel took the railings down and we realize we now need to reinforce the plexiglass as railings were holding panel frames in..oh well we can do that.
Now I have a pile of railings and the deck and ramp done. I was hoping to get the railings up this weekend, but the stores don't seem to carry the turned posts we used everywhere else on the house..so I'll need to make a trip to Traverse City to see if I can find some up there (or maybe Joel will do that tomorrow).
The first picture is day one, when I had dismantled the front steps, and wanted to get enough of the decking up so I could put the front steps back on (no railing back up yet then)..so people could access our front door (if they didn't break there neck on the mess of pavers we pulled up and dirt all torn up).
The second picture is day two, Friday, when I finished the flat decking and got a start on the ramp. It is going well but each day finds me totally exhausted and sunburned.
The third picture is today, day three, Saturday Memorial Weekend. Each day I've had to make a lumber run, and Joel made a run for screws yesterday. And I'm still needing to buy more stuff, probably more spindles and need to find a place that sells the turned posts as the stores I went to don't have them.
The deck turned out to be L shape 8' across 4' wide and 8' forward 4' wide..and the ramp is 24' long 4' wide. Eventually the railings will be up, hopefully nicely painted white..the front porch plexi frames need reinforced and painted white..and the gardens and yard need much repair, pavers reset and not covered with lawn..trellis for pink roses and blue clematis need to be reinstalled quickly as they are already growing like mad.
Ok time to get posting on my blog again, I've been sooo lazy.
It is blossom time in the wild north, and everything is in bloom right now...with a frost forcasted for tonight (oh no)
I've pretty much finished the project that has been keeping me off the internet all spring. I had dismantled an old raised be out back and rebuilt it east of our house, and then bought some lumber and boxed in our hugelbed so they are now side by side. I also built an 8 x 16 arbor crosswise over and between the two and 3 trellises for climbing of vines. Still have some more trellises to build and some more to do to beds, like add manure and plant..etc. Pull a few more weeds, also.
The area that is draped with row cover has baby seedlings and some baby kiwi vines that are tender when young..with frost in the forcast I'm not taking a lot of chances. The bed on the left is my hugelbed (from previous posts). There is a gob of huge logs buried in there ..I built it a few years ago. Have some manure ready to put on the bed when ready to plant. The old white posts need painting..was planning on painting the entire arbor, however, after building it I realized it was just too muich of a job to paint the entire thing. I have to build some more trellises near the other 4 posts for more grapes and kiwi. There are a lot of strawberries planted on the east side of the left bed not visible and the white plastic cylinder is around the trunk of a not easy to see baby Giant Breda Medlar tree, which is just about ready to leaf out.
So far other places I have some things planted and coming up, but it isn't really tender planting season up here. I have potatoes, carrots, beets, parsnips, radishes, lettuces, kale, cabbages, etc planted outdoors as well as some new baby grapes and kiwi and lots of baby fruit trees this year..and the usual suspects (fruit and berry and nuts and perennial plants)..
Have been cutting firewood with my new Oregon 40 V powersharp chainsaw..and have been dismantling fencing that I put in that the posts (landscape timbers) had rotted ..so the fence fell down..
Someday I'll reassemble fence somewhere but just stacking it for the time being (lots of messes to clean up this year)...thinking of enlarging the fence around the food forest in the back to include some areas that are not fenced in..and then line the fence with rabbit fence to keep the critters out of it. But with my husband facing his 4th surgery in 9 months in a couple weeks, it is all in the thinking and planning stages as I'm tossing around the idea of building him a handicap ramp on the front, which will take priority if I decide to do that..as surgery is looming.
