We were able to take several samples home with us, and are narrowing down our options. Luke gave us a lot of his time and guidance, despite the fact that we were (I would imagine) a very small customer, compared to the larger clients and jobs he typically works. He was also incredibly helpful in terms of pricing, and recommendations to keep our costs down.
I got to break up the monotony a bit, by helping move bags of mulch up front. While I didn’t have much to show, our front yard looks great again.
Ready to cut and install the cross beams (the pieces that connect the arches). Liz got these pieces prepped the night before, so that we could hit the ground running when we got off of work today.
Installing the back arch. Things are shaping up! Let’s gloss over just how much shimming and angling was needed, to get these pieces to line up.
Post-work, finally getting around to installing the arches we cut out.
It’s a bit of a daunting process, us committing to installing these things. Because I feel like I did a really poor job of cutting them out. But we sucked it up and tried to align the pieces as best we could.
Found not one but two photos on my phone. Liz continues this terrible habit of snapping photos of me sleeping, and I enable it by posting those photos here.
Liz and I decided to use a rainy Sunday as our excuse to trek up to Logan Square, and to have breakfast at one of our old favorite spots: Lula Cafe.
After I mowed the lawn – this was my next task: dig out an old portion of tree root, in a spot where Liz wanted to put some plants.
Hard to believe this is still here, after over seven years.
Liz, pointing out the new plants that are in. And the various spots where she found a ton of bricks/rocks. Which appear to be everywhere in our yard, at a certain depth.
The more I looked, the more I realized how much of a custom contraption it seemed to be. A bunch of tubes, duct-taped together, leading into a barrel.
I had a lot of fun playing ping-pong with both Sebastian and Paige. They’re both quite formidable, and we were all pretty evenly matched.
Liz decided to get in on the phone, and played a few rounds with Paige in the garage.
Brandon set up a slack line (and is something to behold, watching him run and leap onto the thing).
A big event that many of us were looking forward to this weekend: Tricia, visiting with the kids. It’s been ages since Liz and I have seen Paige, Audrey, and Sebastian… and it was a mini-reunion of sorts when they all arrived.
Liz and I focused a lot on the arbor arches tonight, after work. While I got them sanded down a bit more yesterday… there was still a lot of material remaining. And a lot of fine-tuning still needed.
I set up shop and did a bit of sanding on the arbor arches. Liz ended up continuing to lay out, plan, and plant more things around the arbor.