Paths and Tables

So back in the day the stairs to our house looked like this.

Notice the hefty treads, still in good nick after 100 years outside. When the stairs were demolished I asked the builders to keep them as I thought I'd think of a good use for them.  There are 9 of them, probably about 4kg each, about 900mm long by about 250mm wide and according to the builders, made of Oregon.  I suddenly had a brainwave - I'd turn them into a table for the deck.
The treads sat under the house for months before I managed to persuade Paul to help me build the table.  I wasn't very confident starting by myself especially as we had to cut out the legs which needed a rotating saw.

Anyway with Paul there to help we were quickly cutting up the wood.  I bought some pine posts for the legs, and for the rest of the frame, we had timbers from the demolition of the back door lean to (probably rimu, not 100% sure.)  The timbers from the house had lots of borer holes in (do you think I should be worried that structural timbers in the house have borer!?) so I painted them with anti borer stuff before we started.

Paul helps with the cutting while Sheryl does some weeding

 We discarded one of the treads because it would have made the table too long for the deck doors to miss it.
The chopping up took ages because the reach of the saw is probably only about 5cm, but the posts we were cutting to make the legs were 10cm * 10cm, so with two different cuts I had to sand down the cuts to smooth it out.

The wood all cut but not screwed together

 It then sat like this for a few weeks while we went off on holiday, before I got around to screwing it together.  I had bought some hefty bolts which said they were self tapping, but thought I'd pre drill the holes anyway.  In the event our $30 drill/screwdriver was not strong enough to screw the bolts in, even with the pre drilling (smoke was coming out of it!), and by hand it was such hard work that I got blisters on my hands.  But luckily for me Phil the builder was in doing the ensuite and he had a super powerful drill which finished the job for me.

You can just see the brackets I used to attach the table top to the frame beneath.  The treads are so heavy that there's not much danger of  them coming off unless you pick the table up by them, so the brackets are just to hold them in place really.

Finished article

So here is the finished table.  It measures 1.6m *900mm.  We may still sand down the top but I quite like the unfinished look.  Definitely need some better chairs though!  It is so heavy that if there are any slight uneven finishes on the base of the legs, you can't tell because it's so well weighted down.  It takes two strong people to move it so no chance of blowing over in a Wellington gale!  Cost was around $100 for the posts, brackets and bolts.

So while I was finishing the table, Steve was working on the path.  It is a slow process which we've been working on for about a year and half using bricks from the chimneys we've pulled down.

Mid construction

 Steve works in a very scientific way, with levels, and string lines.  You lay the bricks on a bed of sand.  I think a compacting machine for the sand before laying the bricks would have saved all the hammering in of bricks Steve was doing.  He kept hitting his thumb with the rubber mallet!

hard at work at the door to the basement

The path is finally finished!

 This is immediately after the path up to the steps was finished, the grey bit under the steps is where the sand covers the newly laid bricks.

The view back to the street

 In total we (mostly Steve) built about 30m of path, using around 1000 bricks.  Cost was no more than about $200 in sand, although at $1 a brick it would have cost us $1000 in bricks alone if we had bought them.  We still have over 350 left - brick pizza oven?!?

Relaxing on the deck in the morning sunshine

Our deck is south facing so gets morning and evening sun in the summer months.  Best of all, it is sheltered from the prevailing northerly wind so we often find it warmer than anywhere else in the garden.