Building Materials

We bought a lot of cinder block today and, thanks to our friend Judy and her truck, managed to get it all home and moved into the driveway.

Our current project involves building a raised pad behind the garage for the new rain barrels we're going to install in about ten days.  One of the consequences of low annual rainfall is that, when it does rain, it tends to pour over the edge of the canyon and erode it away, but there's so little of our yard that we can't afford to let it erode any more than it already has.  Hence the new guttering and the rain collection barrels.

However, before the barrels can be installed, we have to build a pad to raise them to the correct height and ensure that they're level.  A couple of weeks ago we built a box out of 2 x 6s.  Cindy then dug out the rock-hard ground, installed the box and filled it with gravel.

The next step is to lay some flat blocks on top of the gravel and then build the cinder block pad on top of that.  Then we're planning to have the front and sides of the pad faced with the same stone veneer we recently had installed on the cinder block planter boxes around the garage and along the back of the house.  It's going to be a big project, but it is under way and should be completed by the end of the month, we hope.

Then we can start thinking about our next insane project.