Making a lot of fire wood

I cut the corner off to see how it would look, then I thought we had better have a hand rail, a high one was decided on with the thought we will put a planter on it, so here we are with all the rotten timber gone, I did think the joists needed replacing and did hope the bearer would serve another round however it is replaced, the footpath has been broken up as the whole of that patch of grass is going under concrete.
At present a lot of water pools under the house when it rains heavy as the footpath slopes towards the house, the new concrete I plan will shed the rain away from the house and will drain onto the grass  I have drilled a row of deep holes in the earth along what will be the edge of the concrete and filled them with old concrete from the footpath, at about 500mm deep I have been hitting sand as we live on what was once a river bed a long time ago, there will probably be more holes drilled and filled with concrete so we can be sure of good drainage in those heavy down pours.
We have changed the whole look of the deck going for two long steps down onto the new concrete and keeping the front one straight line this area in front of the table will have a hand rail, the half way point has not been reached yet and I am needing a rest so we could see a slowing of progress and as there is talk of concrete work happening soon that may well be finished before I am.

 
 

Passion of our garden

We bought 2 bromlaids from a community function they looked as if they had just been stuffed in some soil with the hope they would sell I had my doubts about there future but for the price and the fact it was a community fund raiser I bought and they have lived under the lemon tree for a few weeks now, obviously they like being under the lemon tree and are now putting on a lovely show of pink and getting bigger every day.

Next door the passion fruit is enjoying its spot in the garden as I am picking up about 6 fruit a day that get sweeter as time goes by.

We have now pulled out most of the pumpkins and all of the marrows

this photo is of a harvest that we could not use so was taken to Auckland for distribution, the mass of leaves in this photo conceals about 20 more pumpkins that we are hoping will keep till we can use them.
The pumpkins had grown over the top of all the other plants but nothing seems to have suffered much and after a few days are stood up enjoying the sunshine again.

We have eaten most of our evening meals out on the deck enjoying looking at the wonders of the food producing plants, I don't enjoy looking at the cracked damaged foot path the old worn deck the awful paint job on the hand rail, and as I now have 2 weeks when I don't want to be making a mess in the house the deck replacement seems to be a good way to spend a couple of weeks, I expect it will be more than 2 weeks as I will integrate it with having some concrete laid between the house and garage, I have cut off the corner of the deck to see if we like the look and think by doing this it will give us more room to get the cars in and out, I plan on not
having the present stair arrangement so the next posting on this blog could be a whole different look.

To clean the outside

To clean the outside we use a shower as we think a bath is a thing of the past and who would want to bathe in their own dirt, and finally we have one that is big enough and I am not always bashing my elbows on the mixer tap.
As is usual I still have some finishing to do but I can see this room being finished soon, there are some bits of trim around the ceiling to put up and the floor to varnish, the floor has been a big job as I have used all reclaimed floor boards doing my best to clean them up, I have drilled out the nail holes and used them where possible to re fix with screws then use wooden plugs over the screws I have used a 12mm plug so I was able to drill out as much of the dirty stains left by rusty nails this means that the line of plugs is not straight as would have been nice but in an old house you can't have everything.
The white tile on the walls is a cement based board with a polyester coating in the form of tiles the sheet size is 2.4 X 1.2 and in most instances have not cut well so there is a lot of waste, the dark half wall matches the wall opposite and is a wood grain, the wall on the other side seems to have come lighter over the past few months since I installed it and now looks more red and less black and that I like.
In the last post I showed the brackets and steel inserts to carry the weight of the glass and it has all worked out to my plan, the glass sits about 8mm inside the shower tray up stand and is about 10mm lower than the top of the step so there is no water getting out as it runs down the glass and drips of into the tray, now the door is much further away as it is a slider that slides on the inside so there is a gap of almost 50mm and the water is bouncing up off the tray and the step is wet after a shower but not the floor its a small problem and overall is very successful.
I would like to think the dark wood draw cabinet will not be staying in the room as there are too many wood types and colours in the room it is at the moment convenient but one day I would like to use the off cuts from the wall panels and make a cupboard, that could be a way off yet.