The light beams

Freddie and Jenn again helped me out by helping me hoist the beams up that will hold the lights that were in a prior post. Thank goodness Freddie is strong because I think the beams weighed about 300 pounds each, We put one end up like a ladder and then hooked a series of pulleys to them to hoist them into place. Sandy and Jenn were down manning the ropes. One of these beams was 14 feet long and one was 15 feet long. They are both about 7 X 7 square beams.







Nothing fazes Freddie. It must have been 100 degrees where we were in the barn and we still got them into place.

Here I am crawling around the other end of the beam. You can tell by my shirt just how hot it was.

Sod, Sod and more Sod

Freddie and his friend John stopped by to help but we were all finished. Freddie is a big boy but John is even bigger. John is in the wedding so he was down visiting with Jenn and Freddie.

The sod down

Here is the sod down. We have been fighting mother nature ever since trying to keep it alive. We have hit one of the driest Junes in years and we are watering from sun up to late at night to try to keep it alive. We are hoping our well survives the usage.

Laying Sod

Michael had two friends that were looking for work so we hired them to help out. This is Dan and we did not get a picture of his friend Ron but we really appreciated all of their hard work.



Here I am piecing some sod together.







We had to do a basket weave at the corners to tie everything together. All and all it went down very well.






One of my friends, Chip Dickey helped us on Friday lay the first shipment of sod. His sister is getting married a week after Jennifer.

The sod delivery

I had a friend that had a case loader with forks on it and he came over and helped get it off the truck.

The big day finally arrived and we had a sod delivery of 10,000 sq/ft of sod. This took two deliveries of 10 pallets each to accomplish.



Here is one of the deliveries of sod. It arrived at 6:30 AM and we had it down by 12:00 noon. All ready for the second delivery.

Stamped Concrete

This is the last of the concrete work. This is a colored concrete and they place a rubber mat over it before it is dry and stamp on it with their feet to leave the impression of the pattern you want. We chose a slate pattern with a darker grey concrete. They sprinkle a release agent which adds a contrasting color to the concrete. We chose the color charcoal for the release agent. We won't know how we did until the sealer coat goes on and it brings up the contrast between the concrete and the release agent.


We encountered rain during the pour so they put plastic up to protect the concrete. There was a little damage but not much. It will add to the character of the slate pattern..

We used the same pattern on the side door entrance. The antique hinges really set off the door.

The new side door

This is the new side door I built today. I used some of the left over siding from the walls it came out pretty good. My dog Keelie came for the inspection.





My wife Sandy painted our garden shed door the same color to tie everything together.



This is the new side door up close with the antique hinges from an old barn, the new old light above and the pad all formed up and ready to go.