Saturday 14 August 2010

Day 15 - Saturday

Superb progress today. First up, legs ! Here are the eight legs cut and bolted to the frame sat nicely in their holes with a cut through the anti-weed fabric for access.


I love a little steel on wood..


The full deck frame with legs bolted and concreted in and a few bolsters between the crossbeams.


And now to lay the pea gravel, I optimistically bought eight bags but that's not going to cut it, by my rough calculations I'll need another 18 bags at £5.09 a pop, so off to the DIY store tomorrow for £100 ! worth of gravel I'll never ever see again..


 NEED MORE PEA GRAVEL...

So a quick word on the costs for this project, in a very rough calculation I think this whole thing will have set me back approx £1500, bear in mind £340 of that was for the two skips. Is it too much ? I don't think so really. Given the difficulties of digging out the entire back garden with no direct access and the inventive ways I've needed to employ to get round problems caused by the lack of space I can imagine any 'professionals' would  have taken me to town for about 3k, so actually I'm £1500 up... No didn't convince me either.

Saying that I've also blown 2 weeks annual leave on getting this done but then who would make a better job than me ?, what I mean is who would care as much to get things just right, certainly not somebody simply looking for a cheque at the end of the job. I've also had a huge amount of fun with the project, don't get me wrong it's been fraking hard and almost a spiritual journey of sorts but to start from nothing and achieve all this single handed make me very pleased.

I've never tackled a project this big before and for a first timer I think I've done all right.

Tomorrow - decking boards !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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