garage sales and patio stuff.

So we've hit up a few garage sales here and there this year, but today was the official kickoff of the season with the annual Lakeland Hills community sale. Community sales are the best cos you can hit lots of houses with minimal effort. Too many in this community in fact. But it was a rocking good day - sunny and sixties and unexpected (was supposed to be rain) and quite literally one of the first sales we drove up to (glad I took Stuart!) I got a pressure washer for $20 and an 8' Werner fiberglass ladder for $5 (we later saw that same ladder today at a store for $100) -

Sweet. And another $5 burr grinder -

Awesome. Some more speakers for $5, a 24-hub switch for $2 (though not gigabit, but thanks to Leopard's crap nonsense I'm stuck in 100x speeds until I likely downgrade all of our Macs back to Tiger - quickly becoming IMO the last great Mac OS but I digress ... ) and some other stuff.

We had Stuart properly filled - we hit up the new Pick Quick location for lunch before trucking it back home.

And then I got to work in the garage putting together a quick mockup of my new patio cover design. After finding a lumber outlet in Tacoma (Trevor got all the lumber for his fence there last year) that sells cedar for the same price as crap treated stuff, I moved to an all-cedar design. And because I can't get über-cheap cedar in lots of dimensions (and to keep this from being über-expensive) I had to redesign my plan a bit. I knew I would. It's what I do.

So in keeping with my fondness for multiple depths to designs, I am using 4x4 cedar posts for the six vertical supports I'll pour cement footing for and then tacking on 1x6s (that I'm ripping an inch off so they only stick out 1/2" from each side of the 4x4) to give the posts some dimension.

But backing up some - I also found a guy here in town that sells cedar directly from a mill out of his driveway so I hit him up for some samples more or less on a handshake that I'd be back for more. He had the 1x6s and 2x4s which I am thinking of using for the overhead beams. So I cut and ripped this stuff down today and put it together.

First had to cut the notch for where the 4x4s will cross each other - took a circ saw set to a depth of 1-3/4" (half the depth of a 4x4) and hacked across each 4x4 with cuts set about 3/4" apart (the width of my chisel - which I've since bought a wider one) by just moving my trusty speed square I was using as a guide -

Then it was a simple matter of chiseling out the scraps -

times two and - wallah - intersecting 4x4s -

Then I quick tacked on the 1x6 that I had ripped to 1x5 -

and tested out the stain I had leftover from doing the cedar shakes in the porch gable last year (the nice custom mix that the guy at Mclendons made up for me that I'll have to get to mix me up another gallon) -

I'm afraid the dimensions of the wood I'm using are going to yield a patio cover that looks sort of tiny (such as no 4x8s or 4x6s - of which that one I was using as a sample had lots of) and only 2x4s as the cross beams (instead of 4x6s) - which is why I wanted to put together this little mockup - to check the scale of it in real-life as opposed to the sketches I have worked up.

But - those larger dimensions would probably make this patio cover exponentially more expensive (like that guy could order me 2x4x16s from the mill but the price goes from $4 for a 2x4x8 to $1.50/lin ft or $24 vs. $8 for two 8-foot sections connected in the middle multiplied by sixteen which is how many cross beams I have designed to use). And 4x6 or 4x8 cedar posts would probably be quite expensive as well - and not sure where I'd find them.

And - as I am now - keeping in mind the fact I am going to be moving at some point in the relatively near future ... no sense in going overboard. Spending the money instead on some nice patio furniture and a gas heater that I can take with me to my next house ... and hoping it'll look good anyway with the garage finished, some Christmas lights looped around it and hanging out on warm summer evenings.

Time to buy some lumber.