Back to School

 Quickest summer ever! I swear I just blink and three months have passed and back to school they go. Wesley will be a sophomore in high school (say what?!) and Max will be a 7th grader. 

Laying Stone

We've had an above ground pool for the past several summers but it's time has come to go away. The kids had lost interest in swimming in it last summer and maintenance is high on a 20 foot pool. So last spring we sold it and what remains is a large compacted twenty foot circle in the backyard. Sean spent hours and hours making it perfectly level and I didn't want to just throw some grass seed on it so we turned it into a fire pit. I was going to buy flagstone by the pallet and found someone online selling some large flagstones for $5 each. I bought them all and we transported them home on the trailer. That was no small task loading all of those rocks in the 100 degree weather. The kids were big helpers. 

We got home and I got to work setting them all in place. They were freakishly heavy. It was like a big heavy jigsaw puzzle. I still have to go get polymeric sand and seal all the gaps but that will be another day. 

Fun with Concrete

 I took the summer off from sculpting dogs as I was getting burnt out and wanted to give my hands a break. I found creating flower and shade gardens to be quite relaxing. The shade garden on the side of the house was so big it needed a walk way through it. I wanted to buy some large flagstone rocks to place in the pathway but decided against them after pricing them out at the local stone landscaping store. It would have been about a grand and that's more than I wanted to spend. 

I was looking through YouTube at garden ideas and ran across someone who made a concrete flagstone path through their garden and I was hooked. They used those long plastic blinds that hang over sliding glass windows and taped them together to make a circle. It would have worked but I wanted a more angular look to my rocks so I cut a strip of cardboard and wrapped it in painters tape. I placed the form where my rock was intended to go and mixed up an 80 pound bag of high strength concrete (it has fiberglass in it to reinforce the concrete). One 80 pound bag made two flagstone rocks. 

I let the concrete sit for about 8-10 minutes and then took off the form. The concrete was set enough to keep it's form but pliable enough that I could start "sculpting" it into a rock. I just took a stick and pushed dents into the sides. I then let it dry for another 30 minutes and then covered it in two plastic bags. I used the water curing method where you cover the concrete and let it slowly dry while spritzing it down a few times a day. Did  this for about a week. 

 

After a week I took some oxide powder in black and buff and mixed them with some water and painted the rocks. Then I took a concrete sealer I got from Lowes and sprayed two coats. I'm happy with them. We'll see how they hold up over time. Total cost was a little over $4 a rock. 

The other concrete project was a fountain. I was looking through Marketplace and found someone selling an old concrete fountain base. It was a little over 3 feet wide and they were asking $50. It was cool and had potential. It needed something to go in the middle for the water to come up through so I started hunting for glass containers that I could fill with concrete. I found a lady selling an old glass globe light fixture and bought it for $10. It was a pretty large globe measuring 14 inches on the flat open side. We added a small length of PVC pipe and then mounted an old chicken waterer so that it wasn't solid concrete and allowed room for the fountain pump and tubing. This will all make sense once you see the finished project. 

 

I mixed up an 80 pound bag of high strength concrete and filled the entire globe (I though there would be a lot of leftovers but it used the whole thing). I let it sit for a week covered and then took a hammer to the glass globe. I sealed the orb with the same concrete sealer as the flagstone rocks. The sealer I got was called "QUIKRETE Acrylic Cure and Seal" and is nice because it cures freshly placed concrete and prevents the need to wait a month like most sealers. 

 

We placed the concrete fountain base in the yard next to a birdhouse and placed the pump and tubing up through the pvc pipe. I bought some large river rocks to go around the base and got it running. Sean ended up 3D printing me a little plastic topper for the pvc pipe that held the smaller tubing in place and allowed the water to run out evenly. The birds have found it and each morning there are several birds bathing in it. It was a fun project. The whole thing cost about $75.