PROJECTS

Belle’s DIY project tutorials with everything from home remodeling to sewing valentine boxes for school parties. There may be instruction sheets. There will most likely be Pinterest posts. You may even be able to eventually buy some of this random stuff on Etsy.

Maker culture

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I’ve officially started calling myself a “Maker,” since others have already bestowed the title on me. I guess I knew, but didn’t realize that there is an entire subculture called Maker Culture which centers around people creating stuff. It’s always been there, it’s just that technology and social media have now turned it into a sort of cult.

Makers are those people that generate ORIGINAL content and posts for Pinterest. Yeah, all those great little ideas you just pinned for your kid’s room… those were put there first by people like myself. Although I have to admit, many of my own project ideas come from Pinterest, it’s just that they wind up evolving to the point they’re often unrecognizable as the original post they came from. My biggest gripe about Pinterest is that there are SO MANY amazing, talented creative minds out there sharing SO much stuff and I don’t have nearly time to try even a 1/10 of what I see. I want to do all the things. I’m lucky if I get to pick a couple of the things.
Maker culture also includes software, electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, engineering, metalworking, woodworking, traditional arts and crafts, sewing, food art and any other hobbyist activity you can think up.

In short, makers make stuff.

In between renovating our house, volunteering at school and taking care of husband, child, dogs and other four-legged creatures that currently live here- I am pretty much a professional hobbyist. I’ve painted murals, decorated classroom doors, made my own clothes, created elaborate scrapbooks, sewn costumes and built furniture. My focus used to be almost exclusively our yard and anything to do with planting, landscaping and creating ‘outdoor spaces.’ Now that we’re making moving plans and my yard projects are in a maintenance only state, I’ve had to find new creative outlets. (See PS on the Dirt on Dirt page re- the moving bit)

My most recent project was a classroom door for a holiday decorating contest at school. My daughter’s teacher send a couple of ideas (from Pinterest of course!), I mashed the ideas together, added a penguin and poof! A door. This is one of those cases where I didn’t go too much outside the original post I was given from Pinterest.

These are the original pins with links to their makers:
Bear looking through window
Ice blocks and snow

This is the door I came up with from these two ideas:

door

The thing that I find incredibly frustrating about Pinterest is this: If this were a Pinterest post, you’d likely get a 10-15 word blurb about how it was done and then it’s up to you to figure out the rest on your own. This is fine if you’re a crafty person or maybe you’re just looking for ideas and don’t really need to know how it was done.

However, if you’re trying to get into doing metal or woodworking and you’ve never so much as picked up a woodworking kit (or in this case an X-acto knife and a paintbrush), a bit more instruction would be helpful. This particular blog entry did not start out as a post about this door, however. The door is only an example. So here’s what I’ll do… I’ll show you this fabulous door and if you want to go, “Oh, that’s cute,” then move on to the next thing, feel free. However, if you REALLY are interested in HOW I put put it together, I’ll be making another post soon with all the details and pictures.

Since I’ve decided that the Maker thing is official now, other crafty posts are likely to follow.

Right this minute though, the puppy needs to pee and I have to pick up my kid in an hour, so my Dirt time is up.

-Belle

 

Treehouse!

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004

I’ve been quite busy all summer- just not doing much that I considered especially blog-worthy.

I’ve done a few bits and pieces of things about the garden, picked cucumbers, picked tomatoes (which are slow to produce this year for some reason?), picked more blackberries than I had freezer space for and anxiously watched as my pumpkin vines put out nothing but female flowers so therefore did not produce any pumpkins.

WHEW. For nothing to write about, that was a hell of a run on sentence.

 

011We started the tree house project almost a month ago, but didn’t finish until recently because the weather was just MISERABLE for working on stuff like this outside. The part of August where you’re soaked in sweat before you can make it to the end of your walkway is not conducive to ambitious outdoor plans of any sort.

I made a couple trips to the woods to move a few ferns, decided to hell with that and spent the next two weeks playing in the creek with my kid. It was a wonderful way to spend the end of summer- exploring creek beds and feeding Cheez-Its to crawdads.

The one in the picture rode his about 20 feet down the creek before it took on enough water to fall apart and sink.

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Right- tree house.
So we picked up all of these pallets from the hardware store down the road because they were there. And because they were free. And because I have a zillion posts on Pinterest for projects you can do with pallets. It wasn’t until a couple weekends ago that we finally purchased a Saws-All and decided to break some of them apart and make some stuff out of them. Between the pallets and the tires stacked up, our front fence was beginning to look like something that should have had dueling banjos as a soundtrack. Not wanting to become a Midwest/Southern cliché, we decided to delve into the Pinterest list and make a spice rack. It turned out fairly well and went together with minimal effort. We still had TONS of pallets though, so we decided to use them to build the tree house as well.

tree house (1)The base of the tree house is 4×4 posts, anchored in concrete about 3ft deep. The platform was built of mostly scrap lumber from our dwindling pile, primarily of 2×4’s and maybe a 2×6 thrown in there somewhere. It’s anchored to the top of the posts with big lag bolts through the frame into each post.

The walls are all pallet wood. We used the thicker inside boards for the top and bottom and attached long pallet decking boards vertically to build a wall frame. Shorter pallet boards were added horizontally to the outside of the wall, but to keep the weight down, I didn’t entirely close in the wall with the horizontal boards. The window in the back of the tree house serves as more than just decorative; the V-Shaped bracing gave the entire thing a lot of stability. We used a 2×4 on each end at the top to add strength and help tie it all together. We’ve had 350+ lbs of people up there and there were no creaks or groans.
I will say that our daughter is fairly mellow though when she’s up there. She doesn’t do a lot of rough-housintree house (7)g or bouncing off those walls. If you’re building this for kids that are not of a fairly calm demeanor, I would consider reinforcing those walls with some serious bracing  or at least wrapping the entire thing in light wire mesh. If you’re really concerned about the wall strength, drop the decking down several feet so that it’s sitting down inside the support posts instead of on top of them.

I’ve heard horror stories from my husband about the things he and his brothers did as kids. If I were building this for them- I probably would have framed the walls with 2×4 construction like I was framing a house, used 6×6 or 8×8 support posts and rented an auger to get the posts as deep as possible.

tree house (5)

Tree house Ladder anchor

We tried a rope ladder for access at first, but it didn’t work out very well. It was hard to climb, I was worried the knots wouldn’t hold, it kept twisting with her on it, even though it was anchored. We left the anchor- a 3 ft section of 4×4 with holes drilled on either end and 3 foot long, 1/2 inch rebar pounded into the ground. Tom cut two smaller pieces of 4×4 and drilled into them part way to cap the rebar stakes. They can have sharp edges and they WILL rust after they’ve been outside for a while, so they have to be covered with something. A couple of screws toe-nailed into the caps keep them in place. The ladder was built of 2×4 lumber and attached to the back of the anchor. I’m MUCH happier with this ladder than the rope version; it added strength and stability to the entire structure, it’s easy for our kiddo to climb and we can use it ourselves- which eliminates dragging the tree house (2)stepladder out every time we need to get up there for something.

There is a big truck tire in the bottom of the frame, it’s lag bolted to each post and I’m going to fill it with dirt, rock and mulch to add weight to the bottom of the structure. The tree house decking is almost 8 feet off the ground, so I wanted to make sure it was very bottom heavy. The smaller tires are off my car and fit perfectly between the posts for climbing. I’m thinking I may add more stuff to the bottom later. We’re planning on adding a swing bar off of the post nearest the ladder. I found you can purchase all the swing components- brackets, seats, rubber coated chains, etc. online and they are fairly reasonable in price.

tree house (6)Our daughter decorated the inside of the walls with glittery sidewalk chalk. We added a couple of hooks with paracord and a galvanized metal bucket so that she can haul things up and down without carrying them up the ladder. She was putting random things in the bucket JUST to pull them up and down. 🙂

 

Side note- Anything we added that might hold water, such as the bucket and the tires, we drilled holes in. You don’t want to CREATE mosquito habitat if you can avoid it.

I’ll update after the swing bar and perhaps again when I get to landscaping underneath.

-B

Signs, Signs Everywhere are Signs…

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25 Group1We’ve been working on a path from our house to the back portion of our property since last fall and finally made it all the way up to where we want to build a campsite in the woods. We’ve developed our own little landmarks along the path- such as “Couch” for a huge fallen tree we sometimes stop to sit on, “the twins” for the oak that starts as one tree at the bottom and splits about chest height into two huge, separate trees. Jabberwocky for the tree that looks like it has a knobby, twisted face.
I had originally planned some sort of an Alice in Wonderland theme to mark the path along the way, but then decided I wanted a bit more variation. So instead of one piece of literature, I went with many.
With the help of my 6 y/o daughter, we’ve came up with a list of places from various books that we could put on the signs. I then did some browsing on various font sites online to find original fonts for each design. Each one has hand painted details and is sealed for outdoor use.

01 Pallet1.I had wanted some boards to make signs, but hadn’t come across anything that suited me- until Tom brought home a pallet from work. He said, “I thought you might want to make something out of this.” I clicked around Pinterest for a while, looking at stuff to make from pallets, when it hit me… this slightly ratty, split wood that breaks unevenly on the edges it PERFECT for the signs I wanted to make. So I pried apart the pallet, Tom cut the boards in half with a chainsaw and I had the perfect wood for my signs.

2. To make the signs look like they’d been there a long time, I needed boards with split or uneven edges, but they were also very dirty. I had to do a bit of cleanup before I could use them. I scrubbed each one with a wire grill brush and dish soap, then let them dry overnight before I started painting on them.

3. Before doing any lettering on boards themselves, I did mock-up designs in Microsoft Word to see how the fonts were going to look. I made little notations to myself under each font, like this:

01 Mock UpBy using digital fonts, you don’t even have to be especially artistic to do this, just good at cutting things out with scissors. I didn’t label the font itself in my notes, since it shows in Word what font you are using when you click on the word itself. The Camelot font is one I downloaded called, “Old London.” I noted basic colors and the size of the board so I could size the letters properly in Photoshop.
4. We painted the backgrounds of each board according to the notations in my list. For example, I used a black to red ombre background with silver-metal effect lettering for Westeros. Let your kids help! I didn’t want the paint to completely cover the wood, because the idea was to have these look a bit weathered. My daughter had a blast painting the backgrounds for the signs. 🙂

We let everything dry overnight before starting to add letters. Some of the backgrounds, like Gillikin Country and Pixie Hollow I added colored glitters to the backgrounds. We wrote the name of each sign on the back of the boards, along with the board dimensions.

5. In Photoshop, I opened a file the exact same dimensions as my board. This way, I didn’t have to wonder if they would fit when I printed them out. I also used Photoshop to add color to the fonts, shadows, metal effects, etc. Some I had to split up if they wouldn’t fit on an 8×11.5 sheet of paper. To some designs, I also added pictures- like the pointing hand for Diagon Alley, or the Rainbow in Gillikin Country.
05 Photoshop6. I printed my designs out and rough-cut them to double check that they would fit on my board.
05 Print letters7. This is the REALLY tedious bit. I cut out every detail of each letter until all the white of the paper was gone. For some of them, this was a real challenge. The letters on Tulgey Wood had a lot of little curlicues on the ends and I just couldn’t cut those spirals out without tearing the paper. I wound up just cutting some of them off and painting the curlicues back on after the letters were pasted down. Once you have everything cut out, dry fit the letters again so you can see how they’ll look before you past them down. You might want to lightly draw a pencil line on the board to make sure the letters line up straight.
06 Dry Fit8. I used an outdoor formula of Modge Podge to glue the letters to the board. I can’t say if other adhesives would work better or worse. I can say that the Modge Podge was very easy to brush on each bit of paper, stuck well and cleaned up with just water. It was also very forgiving of mistakes, since it dries clear. I did all my cutting/gluing while watching TV, since this is a rather long and tedious process.
07 Paste Letters9. After the letters dried for a few minutes, I went back over them with several more coats of Modge Podge. I didn’t realize just how important this step was until I started sealing the boards later. The outdoor sealant will get into every crack and crevice it finds and it can discolor your printed letters if you don’t seal the edges properly. I did at least 3 coats around the edges of each letter, until they felt raised to the touch. I only let it dry for a few minutes between each coat, (it was still slightly tacky to the touch) as I was lazy and didn’t want to have to sand it each time.
09 Seal Edges10. I let all the layers of Modge Podge dry overnight. We had several boards in various steps of the process at once, so I could work on others while I waited for dry-time. I hand painted designs, outlines and other embellishments over the sealed letters. This was the really fun part! On Pixie Hollow I added vines and pink bell-shaped flowers. I brushed over the letters with a bit of glue and sprinkled glitter over it, waited for it to dry and brushed it with a dry paintbrush to remove the excess. My daughter loved the sparkles.

10 Paint Details11. This is the Galt’s Gulch sign finished with silver outline detail, a logo and few random splatters.
11 Detail Finish
12. I let everything cure at least 24 hours before sealing. I rushed one of the signs and the paint detail/lettering smeared a bit when I put the lacquer on it. The lacquer is horrible smelling, hardcore stuff. The hardware store did not sell outdoor polyurethane other than in a spray; I didn’t want a spray, because I wanted to make sure the coating was very thick. These boards have a lot of little splits and rough edges- which gives them great character, but also leaves a lot of places for the 12 Sealweather and insects to damage when left outside. I did do research prior to buying a sealant and read that supposedly poly’s tend to yellow outdoors while lacquer supposedly doesn’t. I must have read the wrong forum, because the lacquer yellowed every bit as bad. I did notice that the outdoor Modge Podge didn’t yellow, not even a little bit. But it also warns that the project may have to be re-treated each year to keep the finish weatherproof. Hoping for lowest possible maintenance, I went ahead and used the lacquer. The yellowing is most obvious on white or light colors. On straight wood or darker colors, it looks just fine. You want to do this step outdoors. It says right on the can that prolonged breathing of the fumes can lead to central nervous system damage. Wear gloves, don’t let the kiddos help with this step and if you have asthma or any other breathing condition, pick up a mask at the hardware store that is made to block fumes.
26 Group2
13. After sealing, the signs had to dry for several days (3 minimum) before they felt smooth, hard and no sticky or tackiness. (For Pete’s sake, sometimes writing about this stuff sounds like I’m writing erotica! LOL) The biggest pain the butt with this stage was that they had to lie flat and couldn’t be stacked or touching anything until they were completely cured. I only had to leave them outside for a couple hours before I could pick them up and bring them in without getting lacquer on my hands though.

14. We pre-drilled holes in each sign to keep the wood from splitting when it was fastened to a tree. This may seem like unnecessary work, but if you don’t drill the holes and you split your entire sign in half with a screw, you’re going to be upset about losing hours’ worth of work. I’m happy to say that because we did pre-drill, none of the signs we’ve hung so far cracked a bit.
27 PreDrillHere’s what they look like hung in the woods. As of right now, I still have 7 left to seal the backsides of and 3 more that I’m still doing detail work on. I’ll post the rest on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/BelleOfDirt when they are finished. I also have plans to maybe make a few signs for friends/family. I’m thinking these would make cool “just because” gifts. If you want to see the individual designs, I’ve posted them below in a gallery.


Meanwhile, the garden is finally starting to take off after its late start and I’ll be posting a few updates on how those Hugelkultur mounds are working out. I’ve been doing a lot of reading on sustainable farming/gardening.
Until then,
B

Black to red ombre, metal look letters
For our campsite. 🙂
Harry P font, old fashioned hand pointing
Roland’s famous guns flanked by red roses
Hand painted vines, bell flowers, lots of glitter
Blood red letters on grey, bloody looking handprint
Rainbow and emerald green lettering ringed in gold
Lots of blue glitter swirls
Sillhouette of London behind letters, mirrored below in a lighter blue
Silver ringed letters, Galt’s Gulch logo, dollar sign
Cheshire cat tail in the ‘g’, Momeraths
Hand Painted by my daughter

Mailbox recycle

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We live on a busy state highway with lots of curves. Whether it’s the curves, something interesting on their cell phones, or 83567918beebcb550f5e08c0730f6e70whatever was in the bottle that they threw at the road sign by our driveway- people just can’t seem to stop crashing into the mailboxes here. OK, one was taken out by the snowplow a couple winter’s ago. Thanks for that one, Mo-DOT.

We finally got smart after the 3rd replacement and started anchoring a 4×4 post in bucket of concrete. Since the bucket contained the concrete and not the hole itself, this meant to replace the entire thing only requires pulling the bucket out of the hole, dropping in a new one with a new post and mailbox. The most recent time, it was the post they destroyed. The mailbox itself was a little scraped up, but still serviceable. So, new post, new bucket, new concrete and Voila’! mailbox replaced in under half an hour.

I drug the sad remains of the post down to the house, intending to put it in the burn pile, but it never made it. And it’s a good thing… because I was browsing Pinterest one evening and found this picture: Put your garden hand tools in a mailbox in the yard. I had a post. I also remembered I had a HUGE mailbox that I had bought years ago for our business office and it had never been used. We decided it was too big and gaudy (or perhaps a MUCH larger target on this highway) to put by the road. So it has sat in storage for years- until now.

016Along with the mailbox, there was a 60lb bag of concrete up there, also left over from a previous project. I had loads of extra buckets lying around, from skim-coating ceilings in the house after removing all that nasty popcorn flocking stuff. I dug a few coated screws out and had all the makings of a new box. Tom was kind enough to cut the cross-bar for me the other day while I hunted down something suitable for a hose hanger. We were once planning on hanging our ladders on the back of the house and it never was done. So I had a nice, big ladder bracket that would make a great hose hanger.

I sunk the old mailbox post in new concrete and made a hole for the bucket to sit in. It was important to do that down here in the yard too, since the mailbox was going to sit right in front of our well-pump. If I need to remove the box in a hurry, all I do is 015push a few rocks aside and pick it up out of the ground- bucket and all. We put in the support bar underneath (to keep the weight of the box from snapping the top board off) and added some 2×2 scrap to the sides of the top support to make it wider- this box is twice the size of the one that was originally on this post.

Attached the latch hardware to the box and my ladder bracket to the back- And this was the end result. A nice place to stash hand trowels, a little cultivator, some Off, a screwdriver, gloves- whatever I want to keep near the garden but out of the weather. It’s nice to have a hose hanger near the pump too, so that I’m not always tripping on coils of piled up hose.
I love that the entire project was done from things we already had around the house and in storage, so didn’t cost us anything but a couple hour’s time.

Fire Pit

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You hear it all the time on DIY and HGTV- Everybody who is anybody has a fire pit in their “entertainment landscape.”  The Firepit (4)professional designers come in and they point around the barren, weed riddled pathetic yard of some nice, overworked couple and say, “We’ll put the firepit there, outdoor kitchen here, pizza oven, wet bar, children’s play area… oh and we’ll need a 3×3 ft square for the dog to do it’s business.”

I’m not a professional designer. And up until now, I’ve not really had a huge desire for a fire pit, because up until recently I was pretty much the only one that spent time in our yard. But this fall, we got a four-wheeler and suddenly my husband has decided he likes to be outdoors. He bought camping equipment. He went hunting for the first time since we’ve been married (15 years!) and he’s probably been out in the woods more in the past year than he has his entire life. Part of this was influenced by his brother’s family, who likes to go camping. We spent a little time with them at Fiery Fork, if you’ll remember Firepit (7)from this post: https://belleofdirt.com/2013/06/05/camping-at-fiery-fork/ and that same year, I braved sleeping in a tent TWICE by going to Table Rock Lake. https://belleofdirt.com/2013/07/09/camping-at-table-rock-lake/

This past fall we started building a path through our woods to the back 15 or so acres that is up on top of a ridge; the area back there is park like and beautiful. Problem is, we have to cross a couple of MASSIVE ravines to get there. We’ve almost conquered that project and I’m sure I’ll be writing a ton more about it later. As usual, one project leads to another where the yard is concerned- clearing the path through the woods spawned the fire pit idea.

Mister wanted a spot in the yard where we could all sit around and have Smores, sing Kumbya or whatever else you do around a campfire in the Firepit (2)woods. (No, there are children present. Get your mind out of the gutter) We do not dance naked under the full moon during the Solstice; I have neighbors.

I found this huge, gorgeous, I just gotta have it small boulder (About 200-300 lbs) in the ravine near our yard. So the two of us picked it up, put it on the four wheeler and took it to a spot next to the garden. It was so FREAKING EASY. Until I had a machine, any and all boulders I brought out of the woods required that I rolled them, usually uphill, for about an 8th of a mile. No, I’m not exaggerating. Which is why, until this fall, there have only Firepit (8)been 5 such rocks moved into our yard in the past 15 years. It was a massive effort and took literally days to move each one. But I had just moved one such rock with the four wheeler and his help in a matter of MINUTES. /overjoyedhappydance

So we put this boulder in the yard and it looked lonely. We brought it a friend. They were sitting by the edge of the woods around spot where water always puddles and made a little hole.
I was sitting and looking at them when it clicked- Oh My Dear Gods and Goddesses- I could build a fire pit, out of nothing but huge, gorgeous rocks!!! We managed to bring up just a couple before we got distracted by the path through the woods, then deer season happened, then winter.

A couple weeks ago, we started boulder hunting again. Our land is typical Missouri hills and valleys, which means both neighbors’ property drains into the valleys, creating little wet weather creeks and an Firepit (10)abundance of really cool rocks to find. The next several rocks we moved fairly quick and without incident. They were all really beautiful- worn by water from the ravine, most of them with small plants/moss growing on them, some with visible geodes and fossils in the surface of the rock.

The next to the last broke as we were lifting it, causing me to drop it on his thumb (thankfully he was wearing thick gloves and avoided serious injury). I didn’t realize I had also tried to catch the rock with my stomach as it fell, until I felt something sting, lifted my shirt and found a 6 inch long gash where it had ripped me open. Luckily, not deep enough to need stitches. Unluckily, I was still getting bits of rock and dirt out of the wound two days later.
The actual building of the pit was super simple.
We live in central Missouri and 99.9% of my earth here is either pure red clay, rock, or some combination of the two. In the spot we wanted the fire pit, it was all clay. It’s been raining here for almost a month solid now, so the clay is really holding Firepit (9)some serious water. Imagine putting a 10 lb bag of wet sand on the end of your shovel. Now imagine that it also sticks to your shovel like a booger on a kid’s finger. That’s wet clay. It’s impossible to shovel in. Mostly I just loosened up chunks of earth, then got my hands in there to get the globs out of the hole.
If you’re working in actual dirt or sand, you should dig a hole and then line it with some sort of fire-proof stone- be it brick, cement blocks, big rocks, whatever material suits you aesthetically and will keep the soil from falling back into your hole. I am in no danger of that clay going ANYWHERE. It molds like modeling clay when wet and gets hard as cement when dry. It can crumble a bit in that state, but by the time it dries out this structure will have been there a while.

I painted a circle on the ground with spray paint and dug out about 6-8 inches below the boulders. This gives your wood a nice hole to sit in so that it’s contained and doesn’t blow sparks everywhere from each tiny breeze. Since I’m dealing with saturated clay, my hole immediately filled up with water in the bottom.
The edge was so mushy, I only had to roll the boulders into place where I wanted them anFirepit (11)d press down a bit to sink them into the ground. Had it not been so wet, I would have dug a shallow trench around the outside of the hole. I wanted the bottom 3-4 inches of each boulder to be underground. If you were laying a course of bricks or cement blocks, you’d do the same- bury your bottom course partway in the ground. The nice thing about using boulders instead of landscaping bricks or blocks is it is a very natural, informal look. I didn’t have to worry about leveling each course or lining things up. I just maneuvered them in like a big jigsaw puzzle until I liked the way they looked.

Once the rings of boulders was in place, I took all the mud I’d removed from the center of my hole and pressed it around the base and between the boulders to settle them in. I’ll later put some sort of groundcover around the outside of this; maybe red clover or thyme, something low growing and tolerant of foot traffic that I won’t have to weed-eat all the time.

Firepit (1)Since the bottom of the pit was standing water, we took some gravel from an old part of the driveway to give the wood something dry to sit on. I threw part of a bag of lava rock on top of that, just for looks. I’ve seen people use all gravel, recycled chunks of glass, pottery, all lava rock… really it’s just about finding something that looks nice to you.

We had some old concrete benches sitting up by the highway that we hadn’t used since that shed was an office. We brought those down (along with a small ant colony) and set them up- they are fireproof and I don’t have to worry about them rotting in the mud over there. I’m hoping to add more seating soon, maybe a picnic table and some sort of more permanent path over to that area at some point. It’s right next to the where I’m putting in a new vegetable garden, so it will develop along with that plan.Firepit (3)

After showers and some antiseptic for various wounds caused by the rocks, we had Smores over our new creation that evening. It almost rained on us, but we each got two in before we had to go inside! I hope for many more evenings around it with family and friends. I love that it’s unique, that all the material came from our land and that I can say I spent exactly $0 on materials. (Unless you count gas for the 4-wheeler)

This is NOT a project you’ll be doing by yourself, unless you use much smaller stuff for the walls of your pit. Once we had all of our rocks, it only took about 3 hours to put it all together and have it ready for first use.

Garden and/or sidewalk will be coming soon. I’ll keep ya posted!

Belle

Non-garden related VD

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Pinterest DogBecause people have garden-related VD all the time, right?
In this case, the VD is for Valentine’s Day- or in other words, that day of the year that I now forgo a romantic lunch or dinner dates with my husband for school parties involving preschool crafts, paper valentines and games like tossing bean bag shaped hearts. And I wouldn’t change a thing. Really. No, really.

Ok, maybe one little thing. Like Alice, I often give myself good advice, but I very seldom follow it.
I browsed through Pinterest, looking for creative ideas to spruce up the old Valentine’s box that were a bit more exciting that tissue paper and stickers. My daughter spotted an adorable dog that looked like it was cut out from felt shapes. I clicked the link and it went to a picture. No tutorial. And I was pretty sure that the thing was a bit TOO perfect; maybe a little Photoshop for good measure? Or perhaps that parent had an airbrushing paint gun and a machine to precisely cut all the shapes. I thought that perhaps I should go back and find something else, maybe one that came with instructions, but the child wanted “THAT ONE.” It was decided.

It was felt shapes glued to a box, how hard could it be really?

I realized I only had 5 sheets of felt available, and out of those only 3 colors would work for our dog. No big deal, I have old t-shirts that I’ve trashed in the yard. I hacked up a red one to use for the dog’s collar and accents. I didn’t have nearly enough of any one color to cover the back of the box, so I got some metal pipe tape out of the tool drawer and taped the box up with that. It’s shiny. What kid doesn’t like shiny?
I cut out the shapes and started gluing things on; so far so good. The face and the body all went on without any trouble, the collar only needed minor adjustment. It took me a couple tries on paper to get the heart shape with 3 perfect circle toes for the feet. I wound up drawing the heart shape, then using a water bottle cap to get the circles perfectly round. I used a straight pin to pin the paper pattern to my felt before cutting any felt. I only had one sheet of brown, so I had to make sure I didn’t make ANY mistakes or it meant a trip to Wal-Mart. Which meant I had to shower and put on real clothes, not house clothes. And shoes. And brush my hair. You get the idea.

Puppy Valentine BoxFeet shapes all cut out, I went on to try and glue the toe pads and hearts onto the foot. The fabric glue claims it will bond any fabric to most other materials instantly, you need only hold it for a few seconds, then let it dry to full strength over several hours. I worked on this box for 5 1/2 HOURS. The glue never stuck. It did dry though; it made the fabric all crusty, it stuck to my fingers. My fingers stuck to the felt, to the box, to the couch, to the table. The felt would not, for whatever reason, stick to itself. So I got out a needle and thread and hand-sewed the pads on.
Then I had to get the feet onto the body. Same problem. The white felt wouldn’t come off the box without tearing. It ACTUALLY STUCK. So I sewed through the box and all and stitched them on to the body.

It went pretty much the same with the facial features, the ears, the little heart (broke my thread and then the needle on that bit) and the bone bow. I sewed it all. I bled. I broke needles. I broke thread. My daughter was supposed to help with this project. She lost interest and wandered off to play computer games around the 11th time I glued myself to the couch.

All in all, even though it turned out to be a lot more work than I’d anticipated, the box didn’t turn out too bad at all. I varied it a bit from the original, with long, droopy ears instead of short ones. I prefer large dogs to purse dogs and the one in the original Pinterest post screams Pug. Ours looks a bit more like a mutt. I added my daughter’s name to the bone-bow so that other parents will know which box to stuff her Valentines in.
I’m very grateful for several things because of this project: I’m glad it’s almost spring and I’ll soon be able to get back to projects that are a bit more to my talent. Dirt, rocks and growing things. I’m glad it turned out as well as it did and that I gave my daughter her puppy box instead of telling her, “Sorry kid, it’s last year’s box for you.” I’ve learned that if you make things without instructions, it might be better to REALLY think things through prior to going at it with the glue. This would have been a project 3 hours shorter, had I only sewn this stuff together, THEN stuck it to the box.

That’s our box, in all it’s glory. And I’ll be sure to post this to Pinterest, so perhaps some other unsuspecting, glue challenged mother may learn from my adventures. 🙂

-B

Life is what happens when you’re making other plans

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And if you found yourself singing John Lennon just now, you may be telling your age like I am. 🙂
So, what the above means for those of you that aren’t Beatles fans, is that I’ve hit a bit of a snag in my long term plan recently. This also means I have to focus on some other projects that are non-yard or garden related for a while. I’ll still try to post all I can and get some of my already planned posts up here, but I’ll probably be spending most of my time wrapping up projects, rather than starting new ones. I’m still working on stuff and getting out in the dirt, just not in my preferred way. Rather than putting 75 trees into the ground this spring, I’ll be cleaning up old messes around the house, doing some construction and remodeling projects- stuff like that. I spent the weekend clearing out the pile of scrap lumber behind our house, rebuilding the little bridge back there and tearing apart our old benches, since the lumber had mostly rotted away.
Today I removed our bathroom sink, took the formica countertop off and started taping and mudding the new drywall in the master bath room. I am a VERY busy Belle right now. The upside to all of this is that I’m going to be in fabulous shape by the end of summer if I keep working like this. The downside is that I may not have as much time to write and dedicate to plant life as I would like. But this too shall pass and as soon as I get the necessary projects squared away, I’ll be back to planting and gardening with a vengeance.
FYI, if you need to remove Formica from a countertop without destroying the countertop, a household clothes iron works absolute WONDERS. I set it on the counter for a bit to warm up the glue and used a metal drywall knife and hammer to lift it right off.
-B

Building a Pond: Part 3, Waterfall & Fancy Bits

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The waterfall and finishing of the pond is a lot like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle. Except with very heavy rocks. And you’re likely going to get wet.

Waterfall structure

I started with two large rocks that probably qualify as small boulders; they were heavy enough that had I picked anything bigger, I would have needed help lifting them. These I settled in place at the base of the waterfall on top of large scraps of liner for extra protection against punctures. I chose rocks a bit smaller than a volleyball next; using these to build up from the base and scattering a few around all the way to the top.
On the top tier of concrete blocks, I placed a single flat stepping stone in the center of the falls. The intention for this rock was to give the water a nice flat place to spill over and into the pond. A couple of large rocks were used at the back of this as an anchor. I also sprayed a little landscaping foam under it when I decided it was exactly where I wanted it and that it wouldn’t be moved.

You can get landscaping foam from the hardware store near the pond stuff. Unlike the house expanding foam, landscape foam is black, doesn’t expand quite as much and is sticky enough to hold small rocks or sand in place until it dries.
Once I had large stones and the basic framework for the falls in place, I ran tubing for my pump. In case you need to move your tubing later for some unforeseen reason (as I did), make sure you run it along the OUTSIDE of your falls and give yourself PLENTY of extra to work with. I went right up the middle with mine and cut off all the excess. I later realized I had only attached a pump for water flow and needed some means of filtering the water to keep it clean and healthy for all those frogs pooping in it. I purchased a UV filter to attach to my pump, only to realize my tubing would not reach the filter because it wasn’t submersible. >.<

This is what giving up looks like.

First I face palmed. Then I sat down and stared at my perfect, beautiful falls that I’d worked so hard on and now had to tear apart to get the old tubing out and run new. Finally, I sucked it up and just fixed it. I swear it doesn’t look quite as good as it did originally and some of the rocks I had stuck in place with foam, so I had to hide the foamy bits by turning these over or putting them in a different spot. I’m just glad I didn’t bury the tubing any deeper, or I probably would have scrapped the entire project in favor of a pondless fountain. So again, run your tubing along the outside of your falls and try not to put it too deep. Also, take care that you don’t place large rocks on top of it; ½ inch pond tubing (which is standard for small ponds) is not as thick walled or sturdy as garden hose, so it squashes and kinks fairly easy.

In my new setup, I have a UV filter sitting in the mulch underneath a spirea bush where it is fairly hidden. The submersible pump tubing goes into the UV filter and another piece of tubing comes out the other side of the filter; goes underneath the rock for the falls and opens at the back of that flat paver I put on top of the falls. The water runs over the paver, down several smaller rocks to the large boulders and into the pool.

Whew! Almost sounds like I’m describing a Rube Goldberg machine, doesn’t it? (Except not nearly as interesting)

It’s not a dramatic effect, just enough to give the water some sound and movement. Of course, the larger pump you attach, the more force your water will come out with and the greater the effect of your falls. I had hoped for a bit more flow and may add a larger pump in the future, but for now, this one will do.
I have noticed that the UV filter seems to do a very decent job of keeping my water fairly clean. It’s supposed to take care of bacteria also and there are no charcoal filters to mess with changing. Just switch the light out once a year, according to the instructions on the box. I purchased it from Amazon for $60.

You may need to move some rock around or spray a bit of foam along the watercourse of your falls if you want the water to travel along a specific path or to prevent leakage off the sides. Once you have the filter and falls in place and running, the rest of the setup mostly involves making the pond look pretty and covering any remaining liner.

It took me quite a lot of rock to frame in the rest of the falls and go around the pond in a horse-shoe shape. I left the end toward the yard open to make a pebble beach. I had read that if you are trying to attract frogs to your pond, they enjoy a nice beach to get in and out of the water and since my daughter is fascinated with frogs and toads, I built them a beach.

Visitor to our pond

I folded the liner up over the rocks on the garden side, filled that area with dirt and then trimmed the liner off level with the dirt. I covered any remaining edges with a line of

pine mulch. On the side with the spirea, I folded it up over the rocks again, trimmed it and then hid the edge with mulch.

The waterfall area was entirely covered with rock of varying shapes and sizes until very little liner was showing anywhere. Just fit, rearrange and play with it until you get a look you’re happy with. I don’t think there’s any real right or wrong here. Other than physics of course, don’t try and balance big rocks on top of a pile of loose smaller rocks, or you’re asking for a nice avalanche later… which could squish one of those prized frogs. You can use a bit of mortar or more landscaping foam to secure rocks in place once you like the placement if you want to make the whole structure more stable.

For the beach area, I left three of those flat concrete paver blocks underneath the fabric underlayment to give a solid base to the beach, since it’s fairly likely my daughter will be sitting there a lot and it’s also where I climb in and out should I need to get in and work on the pond or move things around. I didn’t trim the liner or the underlayment there, but let it spill out into the yard. I had purchased 3 bags of pea gravel and about 7 bags of river rock to cover this area and finish covering the liner in the bottom of the pond. The gravel stays in place on its own fairly well.

I did see a nice trick for keeping this stuff in place if you do have an issue with it staying put: Put on a pair or those rubber

dishwashing gloves (they are going to be ruined when you’re finished, but at least your hands won’t be), then spray a layer of landscape foam over the pond liner. Over this, press river rock into the foam in handfuls until the liner and the foam is completely covered with rock. When the foam dries, the rock will be glued in place. I did use this trick on the sides of the pond where I had neglected to build a good enough land-shelf for rock to sit on.

After the beach was built, I dumped another couple bags of river rock into the pond to cover the bottom. I hid the pump under a light, flat rock and scattered more river rock around and over it to cover the rest of the pump and tubing from view. A few handfuls scattered over the falls and along the sides of the pond makes it look more like a

natural creek setting and can fill any gaps where the liner still shows.

I haven’t seen any lilies to add to the pond at the store yet. I’ve had them in a pond in our yard in the past and they are wonderful to watch the frogs sit on and gorgeous when they bloom. If I get my hands on any, I’ll be sure to post pictures later. Since there was a lack of water lilies available, I opted to re-pot my bamboo and break a couple pieces off to tuck in to the rocks. Bamboo is ridiculously versatile. It doesn’t really even need soil to grow, it will grow in rocks right in the water. I don’t think this stuff will over winter here in Missouri, but I have two pots worth and don’t mind replacing it every season. If it does overwinter, it may become a problem child later, bamboo can be pretty invasive if not kept in pots where the roots are contained.

For now this is the finished project.

Top down view from the sidewalk

Like every other structure in my yard, I’m sure it will not hold up to scrutiny and will be constantly tinkered with the longer it remains. Perhaps for the next month or so though, I can call it complete and just be content to watch the kiddo enjoy her frogs.  🙂

Finally finished! ….. for now.

-B

Building a Pond, Part 2 Waterproofing

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I’m taking today off from the yard. Yesterday I poured concrete for our sidewalk since the weatherman assured me there were going to be several at least semi-dry days in a row. I didn’t want to quit until all the concrete I’d purchased was used and I couldn’t be bothered to stop what I was doing long enough to go inside and put some sunscreen on. Now, I’m sorry to say, I have a very nasty sunburn that is keeping me from the yard. So lemonade from lemons and all that, I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to work on my next post about the pond project.

So where were we… oh yes, mud. Lots of mud.

Luckily, I had leveled the edges of the excavation prior to the rain turning the entire pond area into Mudville. I opted for a very simplistic method of accomplishing this: I moved dirt from the higher side of the pond to the lower side until it was mostly level all the way around.
As long as it reaches from one side of the pond to the other, you can use any straight board with a level sitting on top to check level. This works for ponds this size or slightly larger; if you’re doing a much larger pond, leveling will be more technically involved.

Leveling the sides of an organic, freestyle bordered pond is forgiving compared to a formal pond in an exact shape. You still need to level well enough that water doesn’t run out the low side, but minor imperfections can be hidden with rock or plantings.

Perfectly round or square ponds will be noticeably lopsided if the water level is higher on one side than the other. Water will run over the low side and liner will show above the water level on the high side; which makes your pond look silly. Not to mention it can waste a lot of work and expensive materials if you realize that it sucks after the fact and you can’t live with lopsided.

Check for level from every angle, and then check it again before you start moving heavy rocks or mortaring things in place.
Formal ponds may benefit from a brick or concrete block ring set in a light mortar bed around the perimeter of the pond to help it maintain a precise shape and make sure the edge is perfectly level.

Ok, so sides are now level and if you’re me, you’re about ankle deep in mud and not sure whether it feels nice between your toes or just really slimy and gross. It makes a nice SSSSSTHOCK sound when you pull your foot out, which is giggle-inducing to all preschoolers within ear shot. Doubly funny if you lose your sandal to the mud sucking if off your feet. Brownie points if you lose BOTH sandals and nearly get a mud facial trying to rescue them from the bottom of the pond.

I cut my underlayment in half and covered the entire area around the pond and the waterfall, overlapping the underlayment in the middle. An underlayment of some kind under your pond liner is an absolute necessity if you don’t want rocks or sharp roots poking through and destroying all your hard work when you add water.

Water is HEAVY and will cause anything pressing on your liner from underneath to push on it exponentially harder. In the winter, if you leave your pond in place with water in it, this is even more so as the ice pushes up against the walls of the pond as it expands. You need a nice, soft cushion over that hard, unforgiving ground to protect the liner. The clay-type liners are more forgiving in this area, since the clay itself can act as a natural sealant against small punctures. However, a large rip could still destroy even a clay liner, so it’s best to do your prep work regardless of the liner material you choose.
My liner is PVC, because this was cheapest option. EVDM liners are a better choice if you can spend a few extra $; they are stronger (made out of a material similar to car tires) and can tolerate UV rays from the sun better than a PVC liner can.
If you don’t want to fork over the $20 or more for underlayment, a layer of sand and newspaper or cardboard will work instead. Just make sure it’s durable enough that the sharp bits are not going to come through and trash your liner.

After the underlayment is in place, spread your liner out a bit and let the sun warm it up to make it easier to smooth out the wrinkles. A couple of flat rocks on either side of the pond will help hold it in place when you start to add water and can be moved to allow slippage as it fills.

I actually bought two liners for this project, one for the pond and another smaller liner for the waterfall.
The pond liner goes in first, the waterfall liner should overlap it. I had enough for the pond  to run up the waterfall with a bit of slack so that it didn’t stretch too much when I added the large rocks for the waterfall base and then water. Leave plenty of slack at the base of the waterfall liner and let it hang down into the pond. If you’re not doing a waterfall, ignore this entire paragraph. (I probably should have mentioned that BEFORE you read it.)

Liners in place, I filled the pond about ¾ of the way with water, adjusting for slippage as it filled. “Adjust for slippage” is fancy landscaper speak for smoothing out the wrinkles enough that it isn’t tight, but doesn’t look the skin on a Shar-pei puppy either.

The spot where my daughter is sitting in the photo has been dug out to slightly below the rest of the sides in order to build a beach area there later. I put some cement blocks underneath for the time being, just to give us a stable place to climb in and out of the pond and keep the water from spilling out of that area.

You can trim off major excess of liner now if you wish, but don’t trim too close to the edge; you’ll want to leave enough to wrap up around the coping stones (your rocks that border the pond) or tuck under the grass if you prefer the natural look. I saved the really large pieces of leftover liner to put under my big stones and small boulders to guard against tears and punctures.

I can’t stress enough how you should buy a MUCH bigger liner than you need for your project. This will ensure that A) You don’t have a nasty “My liner is too freaking small for this hole” surprise and B) That there is plenty to wrap and use for padding.

At this point, the pond is basically in place, but there is still a lot of ugly black liner showing and a PVC covered pyramid for a waterfall. I’m using a basic drop-in pump with an attached UV filter to move the water. If you’re doing a bio-falls and skimmer, you’ll need to watch their little video or call a plumber, etc. to get that thing installed. The drop in pump was cost effective. Previous years, I actually used one of those fish tank waterfalls disguised under rocks to run my small pond. It worked pretty well and was under $30. The drop-in pump in and filter will run you closer to $100, but it can also handle filtering a much larger pond.

Next, it’s time to do a jigsaw puzzle with a big pile of rock…

Building a Pond: Part 1, Hardscape

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Our little pond project went better this time, (I hope) only a few hiccups along the way and a little flooding problem I’ll have to be addressing before it is complete. I’m going to be doing this in a series of posts, since it’s a rather lengthy process with lots of pictures. And just a side-note: Water-containing things… still not my favorite element to work with.

Since this was my first attempt at a pond that I didn’t just dig a hole and toss the hard plastic liner in the ground, I did some reading online and even checked out a couple library books on pond construction before I started. I ordered a PVC liner, some underlayment and landscaping foam from Amazon.com. I also hauled buckets and buckets of rock from our woods and surrounding yard to the pond site. I didn’t want to have to buy large amounts of stone; I was hoping to keep the budget for this project under $200.  At this point, I was in $49 for the liner, $20 for underlayment, $50 for a pump and $20 for landscaping foam; so right on target after buying a couple bags of river rock and some mulch to finish it off.

The first two days of this project were all about hardscape. I hauled rocks out of our woods, sometimes by the bucketful or one at a time depending on the size. Some of the really big ones I had to just roll out of the woods, since we don’t have a four-wheeler or other mechanical option to get them to the yard. My daughter helped by picking up smaller rocks and pushing a few of the larger ones back down the hill for me. >.<

I thought that I had more than enough rock when I’d finished, judging by the size of the pile I wound up with. It turned out that this was only about HALF of what I actually needed to do the job, so I spent another day during the pond construction rock searching and hauling. We are lucky cost wise that we have such a huge resource of rock available on our site. If you don’t have this kind of rock readily available, be prepared to shell out a couple hundred dollars to have stones of this size and in this quantity delivered to you.

Third day or so was spent digging. I used an old piece of hose laid on the ground to get a general outline of where I wanted the pond to be. I then stuck my shovel in just deep enough to leave a line in the ground around the hose so I had a rough outline of the pond. Since the back of the waterfall was going to butt right up against our sidewalk, I decided to work on that next. I figured the best way to make it stable would be to build it like a raised flower bed. You lay your first course of rock (in this case, cement pavers I had lying around from a previous project) at least halfway buried in earth. 

The ground slopes from left to right in this area, so I dug a shallow trench deeper on one side than the other to level the first three blocks in. For flower beds, I would usually just eyeball the level. For this project, I went inside and actually got a level and checked each block for level and then all three of the first course for level against each other. I can’t stress how very important it is that this first course be as level as you can get it. For every little bit the first course is off, the blocks you stack on top of it will be exponentially off level which can lead to a very unstable structure. 

I wanted the waterfall to come to the top of the sidewalk, so I stacked blocks 3 high in a pyramid, leaving a few inches for the decorative rock I’d be putting on top. Once I was happy with these later and sure I didn’t want to re-arrange them again, I glued them together with a little landscaping foam.

Now that I had the waterfall base in place, I started digging the pond. This is where I should have done a bit more research, because I made a mistake that is probably going to prove to be a real pain in my butt sometime in the future. I dug out the hole and then went back and built up shelves out of leftover dirt. Our soil is mostly clay, which sticks together and packs nicely, so this was very easy to do.

The CORRECT way to do this is dig a shallow hole for your first layer. Then re-mark the outline of the pond a few inches or so from the perimeter and dig a bit deeper to create a ledge out of undisturbed soil. Then mark a perimeter again a few inches in to create a second ledge of undisturbed soil. Finally, mark your last perimeter and dig even deeper. This is the center and deepest part of the pond where your pump would go.

When you finish it should look like this nice professional picture of the man with his level, which you will note, doesn’t look much at all like the sloppy hole I dug myself. I only put shelves in where I thought plants might sit later. Also, I had this issue with small children in my excavation. If you have a small child in your dig, I recommend you get them out, especially before installation of the rock or liner.
Those first and second layers of shelving in the example pond are not only for plants, but you need them to hold rocks in place that will hide the sides of the liner later. The website I took this picture from is a good example of how to do it right. My dig is an excellent example of what to do if you want to be standing in a pond half full of water later, saying to yourself, “How the hell am I supposed to get these rocks to stay on the sloped sides of this pond?” This was my first major mistake.

The depth of your pond will depend on it’s purpose. If you are only going to put a few water plants in, it only needs to be around 1.5-2ft deep. I kept mine fairly shallow so that my 3-year-old daughter was able to sit on the bottom without the water level being over her head. Had I installed this a year or two ago, I probably would have opted for a pond-less feature with a recirculating fountain.  The current pond is outside the fenced play area of our yard; in other words, it’s in a place where she should never be around it unsupervised. I built our pond with her in mind. It will home to frogs and a few water lilies, but no fish.
If you are building your pond for fish, it will need to be deeper- at least 3 to 4 feet for koi, slightly less for goldfish. Basically, the fish need a place below the frost line where they can hibernate without the whole pond freezing solid. Having fish in your pond may also involve installation of a heater and a pump to keep oxygen circulation going.

I didn’t finish the pond the day I dug my hole. I ran out of steam and time, so I let it set and planned to pick up where I’d left off the next day. Then it rained. A lot.  And I wound up with a big, muddy hole, ¾ full of water. Did I mention that clay is an excellent medium for holding water? In fact, they make natural pond liners out of clay and a bonding material that you can use to line your pond if you prefer not to use PVC or EPDM liners. It’s more expensive, but can be self-sealing and it’s a natural alternative to plastic or rubber. Large scale farm ponds around here often utilize clay as a pond base to hold the water in.
SO… after it finally quit raining, I went out and pumped and bucket-scooped the water out of the hole so that I could replace the muddy, mucky mess with my nice, clean PVC liner. The fact that the pond held water so well without any liner at all should have told me this would be a problem later. I was oblivious however and continued on, unhindered by mud or knowledge of hydrostatic pressure and ground water tables.
…to be continued…