Destruction, construction and a birthday bash...

My goodness, it has been ten days since I posted! Where does the time go? We are in San Diego, staying with Laura and Tim and little Josiah. Another baby is due to be born on September 5th, and the kids wanted help with straightening up the yard and getting prepared for the arrival of our second grandson.

So far, Tim and I have knocked down the cement block wall that ran between the house and the garage. It was about 16 feet long, six feet high and about 6 inches thick. We rented a rotary hammer, also known as a jack hammer, and went at it. It took us about four hours to remove the wall and a brick planter that was on the back side of it. Cleaning up the rubble is another matter entirely. Tim has a call in to a couple of possible sources for hauling away the debris from the wall, along with other trash that has accumulated.

Some of that other trash is left over from our second big project. There was an 8' by 10' shed made of sheet metal in the back yard. It was old and rusty and dilapidated, and Tim and Laura wanted it removed in order to open up the other end of the back yard. Tim and I talked it over and decided to dismantle half of the shed and do some remodeling which will result in a smaller shed that is 5' by 8'. That project is about 80% complete. There is still a gap between the roof ridge and the top of the wall that I moved into what was formerly the center of the shed. I hope today to engineer a solution to that problem. Then it will remain to pressure wash and paint the "new" old shed and move it to its new location by the corner of the fence. Jill, bless her heart, has offered to do the painting, a job I do not relish.

The final construction project for this visit will be a new gate between the garage and the end of the fence, which formerly connected to the now defunct brick wall. This project should be relatively simple, and it involves using new materials, unlike the shed remodel, which involves old rusty sheet metal, screws that are rusted to their nuts and have their screw driver slots filled with old paint. And spiders...did I mention the old shed was a haven for spider, from daddy long-legs to black widows! Yuck!!

Yesterday was my birthday, and we had a wonderful time. The whole family went out for breakfast. Then Tim and I went to work on making a new brick foundation for the shed. Later we placed the final fence post to support the end of the fence that formerly attached to the brick wall. That is the one on which the new gate will swing.

At the end of the day, Tim, a master of the grill, grilled some nice thick lamb chops, asparagus and fingerling potatoes for my birthday dinner. We topped it all off with a bit of ice cream cake from Baskin and Robbins! What a feast...what a family. It was a VERY good birthday.