A busy, busy day...

We had a short but productive time at Wildwood this past weekend.  We've been trying to keep our plans more realistic to the amount of time we have so there isn't a never ending list of to-do's vs. finishing things that we start.

This weekend we were pretty much right on and even got in a bit of extra.

The main project to tackle was to setup the Toja Grid pergola kit.  The Toja system (tojagrid.com) has steel corner brackets sized for 4x4 posts.  "Simply" put, you pop your 4x4's into each of the connectors, clip on the shade sail and hey-presto, you're done.  Advertised as 2 people, 45min (for a single section).  1.  If the people are 5'6" and the posts are 8"...they won't be able to simply lift the top up and stick the legs in.  2.  A bunch of 4x4 posts 10-12' long...is not light.  ZERO-chance that two average height working stiffs are lifting that, with one of them is holding it upwhile the other juggles a post into it.  45min = 4 hours, at least for me, if the posts are being set into concrete in uneven ground.

So here's how it went...
- I cut the field where it was going to go...eyeballed and rough thumb-at-arms-length aligned where the pergola would go
- I laid out the 4x4 posts and corner connectors...so I could mark where to dig the holes for each post.  When you buy the kits you buy based on size and although all the connectors are the same regardless, the shade sails are pre-sized. We bought 10x12' shades and setup the structure to be 20' long by 12' deep.
- I spray painted where each leg would be, took it all apart, dug the holes and cut 8" sonotube to length.  Our soil is pretty shallow, so digging holes weren't a problem and I only needed 1' sections of tubes.  8' tubes were probably overkill...probably could have gotten away with 6" tubes.
- We took a long piece of clear plastic tubing we had for playing around with the well and pumps and mostly filled it with water to use as a level between posts and used gravel in the sonotubes to raise or lower the posts.
- Juggling completed sections was way to awkward and heavy for us...so we did two legs with a crossbeam and then braced that as we did another section.  Bit by bit we worked our way around the structure until it was all up.
- We then used post levels to try and get the posts vertical...and in the end just eyeballed it all so everything looks straight and plumb.
- We mixed up concrete and filled the sonotubes...always just not having enough or having too much.
- I over guessed by 4 bags of gravel and 4/5th of a bag of cement...no worries, we'll do something else with all that stuff.
....then the really tedious part of screwing in all the little brackets that the shade sail clip onto...lots of trips up and down a step ladder.

All in all...really nice, provides a good bit of shade.  You can see and feel the sun, but it's very subdued.  Looks nice and has very clean lines.

Cath needed to do the bees and see how they took to the queen she installed a week and a half ago.  Good news is that all 5 hives are back in business...not so good news is that one of the hives is much more irritable than the others.  Cath was stung 3 times under her arm.  She's estimating that 5 hives is as much as she'd want to do in a day, but I'm hoping that once they're well established it won't be as much work.

Cath and the girls made a trip over to the Greer house to pickup the platform M and I made as the start of their play fort.  We wrestled it into position and, for now, just threw down a plank for a gangway to "The Big Rock".  J's fearless but M's a little skittish about heights...so it's about as high off the ground as they're going to go.  They're both excited to paint it and make it their own.  Next chance we get J and I will build another 4x8' deck section to expand it.  Cath wasn't a fan of our scrap wood frame...so we'll revisit that...LOL