Last weekend meant no work in the yard as the club headed down to the Gold Coast for the "Miniature Trains on the Coast Model Train Show". It was great as usual.
In between going to the Gold Coast model train show last weekend and then catching a super cold or flu from it, I've been hitting the backyard nice and hard to get it prepped for the concrete man.
While I was crook on Tuesday I got a call from the concrete dude and he came round and we discussed what was needed and what other concrete, tree stumps etc had to be removed and of course how much fill was needed to bring the back of the yard up to the correct level for the shed.
So Tuesday mid afternoon sees a bit more paving being lifted and a few poly-carbonate sheets now off of the cactus shed.
This week was also council pickup week, so I was able to get rid of a huge pile of stuff. On Wednesday whilst I was crook again, I managed to offload all my cacti to a nice lady at Moreyfield and get rid of all the other plants, and pots.
Above we see the last few plants awaiting the lovely lady who came back late in the arvo for yet another load of cacti and got rid of the remaining ones above. She also happened to take an old wooden entertainment unit I'd been holding onto for 2 years - now I walk in my lounge room without kicking my toe so much.
At the end of Tuesday we have this many pavers lifted, cleaned and stacked.
So between 3 sick days at home, where the sunshine and hard yakka did me more good than harm, and this weekend, I managed to get it almost all clear for the concreter to be called back to do his magic - I'll call him on Monday to tell him the good news.
Friday happened to be my third day off crook, so I used it to advantage and got some plumbing bits so I could re-route the down pipes that feed the water tank so that the tank could be moved out of the way. I tried late in the arvo to do some paving removal, but I got rained on, so gave up.
With the help of my old man on Saturday, we got the old cactus shed cut down. He'd built it for me about a decade or so ago and it was earthquake proof. All welded water pipe and weldmesh and all sunk into concrete footings. I'd skinned it in poly-carbonate sheeting to keep the UV and rain off of the cacti and had shade cloth over parts to reduce the sunshine levels a bit too.
Above is the old man - smart cookie with all sorts of tools and building/demolition as well. You can see that the cactus shed is almost down. During all the cutting of water pipe, we managed to finally burn out the 20+ year old Skill docking saw - just not made to last!! So off to Bunnings and picked up a new Bosch for 99 bucks. The new one is a bit better with it's extra 500 RPM and a tad more HP- cuts the pipe like butter now.
At the end of Saturday we had a pile of pipe and posts - above is just some of it.
Sunday was my day to take a lot more crap to the tip including a lot more wood and stuff that's been sitting around for yonks. Also a pile of dead pots of cacti and plants had to go. While I was at it I filled the trailer with more stuff from the car garage to make it a really worthwhile trip. It ended up being a 360 kg trip. Then I came back and got more enthused and grabbed a pile more stuff like my original 8x4 super heavy table I built for my first layout that never happened - it had 4x2's for stiffeners under the chipboard top - it was bomb proof. That trip to the tip was another 350 kg to the total dumped tally.
The end of the day was spent cutting up the water pipe to sizes suitable for putting in the trailer. In the end I had the 6x4 trailer chock-a-block with water pipe and weldmesh, ready to take to SIMS Metal recycling during the week - well, the old man can do that for me, as I'd better show up to work this week I suppose.
I also pushed the water tank out of the way after getting the last 1 foot of water out with a siphon hose. Another 60 pavers got lifted, cleaned and stacked as well. So here is the old shed and also the back of the house where the tank and cactus shed was, as at the end of Sunday.
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