So this morning, H asked me to help him with our “front area” project. He THOUGHT that we could get going around 9:00 (so miss the morning Crossfit) but “definitely” be done, eat lunch, etc. and off to the 3:00pm WOD.
Um, yeah, so HERE is where we are at 3:17pm . . .
This is so frustrating and I really feel for H. We ordered all this quartzite, because we had figured that is what we would do the whole front area with. After 2 (maybe 3?) days with a contractor and a “helper” doing the majority of the laying out, it was WAY too “chaotic” for H, so he had to keep ripping it out every night and starting over (he hasn’t been to Crossfit all week). Finally yesterday he told the contractor just not to come back.
His feeling is that the quartzite really takes away from the “zen” feeling of the outdoor fireplace. So instead, the idea is now to make a path out of it (the photo above is taken from the stairs up to the house), that “spirals around” the fountain (that’s the hole in the middle), and make the rest a sort of “sandy gravel” – a la a Zen garden. As you can see, of course, we have about 2 tons (truth) of quartzite “extra” (there is a whole extra pallet that’s behind the fireplace, outside of this photograph).
So that’s about a $1,000 mistake (maybe more, not quite sure).
We’ve been doing “puzzle work” since 9:00 – H had a conference call at 3:00, and he’s now off getting something to eat (e.g., decompressing). It’s SO hard to do this silly job.
I am trying to see this with TAR eyes. First, I’m hauling these quartzite slabs around, so feeling rather proud of myself. (I did manage to gash the top of my foot with a sharp edge, but otherwise so far so good.) One thing that H showed me was how to take two sticks he’d put together with a bolt, and to measure the angle of the “hole” that we were trying to find a “triangle/point” to fit into – genius, but something I wouldn’t have thought of. (I was trying to eyeball it, which I’m VERY good at, but sometimes I’d be a degree or two off and hauling a slab of quartzite over to a spot just to find that it wasn’t “quite right” was a pain). By using the 2 sticks (like paint stir-sticks) and bolting them into the angle that I was looking for, I could go “measure it against” all the various slabs.
He also had a very cool contraption he’d made out of 4 sticks – but these had the “bolts” so that they slid down a “track” cut in the middle of each side. What that means is that you can make any sort of shape square/rectangle/parallelogram that you want. Especially when we were trying to find something that was basically “flat on one side but with this shape triangle on top,” it was genius.
Not sure that R and I are going to be laying out a plaza (in Italy?) – but these little gizmos were something I would not have even known existed and they’re great.
Now I have to go and make something for my own “lunch” (at 3:30) and get ready to go out for “Round 2.” Luckily (not sure if that’s so for my bank account, but so it goes) I went through my email and no work for today, so I’m able to do what H needs me to. Tomorrow I have the Send-Off for the LLS Run Team starting at (I think?) 8 a.m. in the city – then Sunday we have Berkeley Rep with Mom and Dad. I thought I was doing the charity auctioneering (I keep getting auctioneering gigs, funny) this Saturday, but it turns out it’s next Saturday. Which is good in that it gives me more “day” tomorrow, but bad in that it’s the day before the Nike Marathon so no wine for me! Shame – there’s always all sorts of great edibles at these things.
That’s all she wrote – time to go pull those gloves back on! :-)
Your transforming the quartzite shenanigans into a TAR episode rocks. Except for the gash on the foot. I couldn’t visualize what you were talking about in terms of the sticks, but should we face a challenge like that, I shall look forward to your expertise. Hate that H kept tearing out the slabs though. They did look quite murderous. I think it’s rather cool that he wants to keep the zen.
Yeah you’re really going to like it when you see it. I can’t believe that he did it – but he was definitely RIGHT to have done it. It’s a TON of dough “mis-spent” and – to his credit – he doesn’t care all that much about that part. OMG moving those damned things around was something. So today, I did yoga (Yay me!) and then my yoga work trade. I had to carry umpteen boxes of gallons of soap down to the basement – seriously, maybe 30, 40 boxes? I kept thinking in my head “this would so be one of those TAR things, how could we make this work out best?” It was kinda funny. OK, it was funny UNTIL I beaned myself on a pipe – so hard I ACTUALLY saw STARS! (I thought that was just a “Bugs Bunny” thing!) The boxes (each with 2 big jugs of soap in it) were all piled up next to the stairs going down to the cellar, which is where it all had to go. I realized that carrying a box or two down the stairs, through the cellar (doubled over under the pipes – except once of course CLANG!), to where they got stored, and back was not the smartest method. What I wound up doing was piling up the boxes on top of the stairs, then moving the pile down a few stairs at a time – so basically “walling myself in to the stairwell” with boxes of soap. Then once I got close to the bottom, I moved them all into the cellar in piles, but I piled them up on other boxes that were already down there (of coconut water, water, etc.) – so that I wouldn’t have to continually bend over. Then I was able to pick up 2 at a time and carry them back to the back of the cellar where they go. I really was thinking of it as a “TAR exercise.” Kinda like the quartzite. It was funny. Helps me make a fairly odious task a bit more manageable.
oh btw re the “sticks” – if you put “carpenter’s angle finder tool” into Google images you can see one that is just the one angle (two sticks and a hinge – though a lot more fancy-dancy than the one H made). I can’t for the life of me find one that is like his 4 sided one. It’s genius. Maybe that’s our million dollars right there ;-) (There is a “4-sided one” that you can see on Google images, but it has a protractor on the top, so it would make only a parallelogram, it couldn’t be used for a trapezoid.)