Tuesday, November 14, 2006
The Epic: Part One
And so it has come to this. My blog postings are now, apparently, a sub-annual event. Increasingly, I feel the urge to blog more about my work around the house and less about, well, anything else.
I don’t think I was as productive this year as last, but oddly enough I myself may not be the best authority on the subject of how productive I was. In actuality I don’t remember anything that I did before I got started on the patio stairs. I might have been the President of the United States prior to getting started on that project, for all I know. It was an all-consuming activity that ate up very nearly every free waking hour I managed to scrape up during my spring/summer project period. I feel like that guy who dreamt he was a butterfly. Or was I a butterfly who dreamt he was a man engaged in an interminable stair-building operation? Truly, who can say?
But first some background. The project I selected this year, not realizing what I was getting myself into, was the installation of a backyard patio, or at least as much of it as could reasonably be accomplished in the time I had. So during the lull after the fall/winter project cycle, when I could no longer stand being in the basement laying tile and whatnot (which probably should have been a blog entry of its own, alas), I procured some landscape-layout software and got to work giving shape to my ideas. The package I selected was written by a company called Punch!. They sell a suite of modular software, with different packages apparently just representing a different set of plug-ins to the same basic program. I believe the package I selected was called “Master Landscape Pro”, a banal-sounding title that ought to teach marketing people everywhere that merely surrounding a word with superlatives does not, in fact, make for an exciting product name.
Now, this piece of software is no AutoCad, but it had the advantage of being about $249,930 cheaper than AutoCad, and after a few hours up the learning curve I was surprised at how useful it turned out to be. It allowed me to get ideas out of my head and onto paper, where it became clear that some of my ideas were stupid. The visualization tools gave me what turned out to be a remarkably accurate idea of the scale of what I wanted to do. This is where I began to realize that I was probably in trouble. Again.
Of all the mistakes I made on this project (and, as usual, they are legion), the worst by far was the trip to the local home and garden expo. It’s one of those events that my wife and I go to every year in spite of the fact that it’s really sort of the same every time. Nowadays when we go, the most common thing we find ourselves saying is “yeah, that’s still really nice”, usually followed by “and we still can’t afford it”. Walking around the landscaping part of the show this year, though, a funny idea began to form in my head. What if I was able to just buy the patio? I started to get really psyched about the idea of moving on to other stuff this year while someone else hefted the damn shovel for a change. By the time we left the show, I was carrying a lot of brochures.
I selected a subset of four landscaping companies to bring out and have look over my plan. Scheduling these meetings, rushing home from work for them, and repeatedly taking the time to tell person after person about my plan taught me one thing: landscaping services currently exist in what is very much a seller’s market. Of the four companies I had come out, one made what I eventually concluded was a good faith effort to produce an estimate that I thought was really high. Two never even bothered to call me back. The last one did the nastiest thing of all: he offered me a “ballpark” price that I was totally ready to accept, but then came back with an actual estimate that was really close to the first guy’s. Overall I was left with the subtle impression that landscapers really don’t like people who come up with their own plans. Or at least that there are too many people with no idea what they want but a big stack of money they’re willing to spend that they don’t bother with geeky dudes who show them an entire presentation on the big-screen.
But each of them had one thing in common when they looked at my plan. They all feared the stairs. They’d start by asking what they were made of. I’d respond that I hadn’t made up my mind yet, but they would be either wood or synthetic decking. Each of them tried to convince me to do them in brick or some other masonry instead. When I told them that I wanted wood (or an equivalent), since everything else in the plan was made of stone, they then immediately asked whether I really wanted the circular details, to which I would respond in the affirmative. They would then look very thoughtful and say “hmmmm” in a way that sounded extremely expensive.
I thought maybe the first guy was just being difficult. When the second guy was the same way I grilled him harder about why it was such a problem. By the third I was pretty much just openly combative about insisting that I wanted the plan as it was shown, but I was keenly aware that there was an issue here.
The problem, as it turned out, was the three-foot radius of the circular edges. Each of the landscapers looked at that particular detail and threw up their hands, saying that they’d have to bring in a carpenter for work like that. In due course, I came to know why they were so afraid, but that is the subject of a future entry.
The reason I describe this entire episode as a mistake is that, for several days during the process, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be the one doing this work. When that deal fell through, all I’d managed to do was to distract myself by thinking about the other projects I would have been freed up to do, and make myself aware of how hard it would be now that I would have to do it myself. Lesson: on a job like this you’re really not better off getting educated beforehand. Next time I’m just going to stick with my tried-and-true formula of just bumbling ahead and dealing with whatever difficulty comes when it comes.
I struggled for a long time with a way to build the stairs as they were shown on my fanciful drawing. The designs I kept coming up with involved like nine separate posts each sunk into concrete. Turns out that, like the landscapers who hated the design, I’m not really a carpenter either.
I finally found the needed inspiration in a book called “Lowe’s complete patio and deck book” (Lowe’s publisher and the Punch! Software guys probably need to get their marketing people together). I had bought the book for a completely different purpose a while ago, and picked it up to look through it for an idea. On page 123 I saw the following illustration, and in that one instant I also saw the entirety of the remainder of the design.
The caption for the diagram tells us that the technique, called Stacked Frame by the authors, is “less efficient in its use of materials”, which turned out to be an almost comical understatement. In the end, nearly 250 linear board-feet of pressure-treated 2x8 material went into the frame for this monstrosity. That much lumber, had I used a less insane design, should have been enough to deck over about half the yard, but in this case covers a footprint of less than six feet by ten. I’m always surprised at what I’ll eventually find acceptable after struggling for any kind of idea for a long time. On the plus side, the use of materials is slightly more frugal than it would have been had I somehow found a way to make each level of the steps out of one large slab of solid wood. Also on the plus side, the design resulted in a set of stairs that will probably outlast the house. You could seriously drive a tank up into my house on these things.
The project spanned from mid-April right up through mid-September. In the next post: the details!
I don’t think I was as productive this year as last, but oddly enough I myself may not be the best authority on the subject of how productive I was. In actuality I don’t remember anything that I did before I got started on the patio stairs. I might have been the President of the United States prior to getting started on that project, for all I know. It was an all-consuming activity that ate up very nearly every free waking hour I managed to scrape up during my spring/summer project period. I feel like that guy who dreamt he was a butterfly. Or was I a butterfly who dreamt he was a man engaged in an interminable stair-building operation? Truly, who can say?
But first some background. The project I selected this year, not realizing what I was getting myself into, was the installation of a backyard patio, or at least as much of it as could reasonably be accomplished in the time I had. So during the lull after the fall/winter project cycle, when I could no longer stand being in the basement laying tile and whatnot (which probably should have been a blog entry of its own, alas), I procured some landscape-layout software and got to work giving shape to my ideas. The package I selected was written by a company called Punch!. They sell a suite of modular software, with different packages apparently just representing a different set of plug-ins to the same basic program. I believe the package I selected was called “Master Landscape Pro”, a banal-sounding title that ought to teach marketing people everywhere that merely surrounding a word with superlatives does not, in fact, make for an exciting product name.
Now, this piece of software is no AutoCad, but it had the advantage of being about $249,930 cheaper than AutoCad, and after a few hours up the learning curve I was surprised at how useful it turned out to be. It allowed me to get ideas out of my head and onto paper, where it became clear that some of my ideas were stupid. The visualization tools gave me what turned out to be a remarkably accurate idea of the scale of what I wanted to do. This is where I began to realize that I was probably in trouble. Again.
The grand design
Of all the mistakes I made on this project (and, as usual, they are legion), the worst by far was the trip to the local home and garden expo. It’s one of those events that my wife and I go to every year in spite of the fact that it’s really sort of the same every time. Nowadays when we go, the most common thing we find ourselves saying is “yeah, that’s still really nice”, usually followed by “and we still can’t afford it”. Walking around the landscaping part of the show this year, though, a funny idea began to form in my head. What if I was able to just buy the patio? I started to get really psyched about the idea of moving on to other stuff this year while someone else hefted the damn shovel for a change. By the time we left the show, I was carrying a lot of brochures.
I selected a subset of four landscaping companies to bring out and have look over my plan. Scheduling these meetings, rushing home from work for them, and repeatedly taking the time to tell person after person about my plan taught me one thing: landscaping services currently exist in what is very much a seller’s market. Of the four companies I had come out, one made what I eventually concluded was a good faith effort to produce an estimate that I thought was really high. Two never even bothered to call me back. The last one did the nastiest thing of all: he offered me a “ballpark” price that I was totally ready to accept, but then came back with an actual estimate that was really close to the first guy’s. Overall I was left with the subtle impression that landscapers really don’t like people who come up with their own plans. Or at least that there are too many people with no idea what they want but a big stack of money they’re willing to spend that they don’t bother with geeky dudes who show them an entire presentation on the big-screen.
But each of them had one thing in common when they looked at my plan. They all feared the stairs. They’d start by asking what they were made of. I’d respond that I hadn’t made up my mind yet, but they would be either wood or synthetic decking. Each of them tried to convince me to do them in brick or some other masonry instead. When I told them that I wanted wood (or an equivalent), since everything else in the plan was made of stone, they then immediately asked whether I really wanted the circular details, to which I would respond in the affirmative. They would then look very thoughtful and say “hmmmm” in a way that sounded extremely expensive.
I thought maybe the first guy was just being difficult. When the second guy was the same way I grilled him harder about why it was such a problem. By the third I was pretty much just openly combative about insisting that I wanted the plan as it was shown, but I was keenly aware that there was an issue here.
The problem, as it turned out, was the three-foot radius of the circular edges. Each of the landscapers looked at that particular detail and threw up their hands, saying that they’d have to bring in a carpenter for work like that. In due course, I came to know why they were so afraid, but that is the subject of a future entry.
A subject of fear and loathing among landscapers
The reason I describe this entire episode as a mistake is that, for several days during the process, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be the one doing this work. When that deal fell through, all I’d managed to do was to distract myself by thinking about the other projects I would have been freed up to do, and make myself aware of how hard it would be now that I would have to do it myself. Lesson: on a job like this you’re really not better off getting educated beforehand. Next time I’m just going to stick with my tried-and-true formula of just bumbling ahead and dealing with whatever difficulty comes when it comes.
I struggled for a long time with a way to build the stairs as they were shown on my fanciful drawing. The designs I kept coming up with involved like nine separate posts each sunk into concrete. Turns out that, like the landscapers who hated the design, I’m not really a carpenter either.
I finally found the needed inspiration in a book called “Lowe’s complete patio and deck book” (Lowe’s publisher and the Punch! Software guys probably need to get their marketing people together). I had bought the book for a completely different purpose a while ago, and picked it up to look through it for an idea. On page 123 I saw the following illustration, and in that one instant I also saw the entirety of the remainder of the design.
eureka!
The caption for the diagram tells us that the technique, called Stacked Frame by the authors, is “less efficient in its use of materials”, which turned out to be an almost comical understatement. In the end, nearly 250 linear board-feet of pressure-treated 2x8 material went into the frame for this monstrosity. That much lumber, had I used a less insane design, should have been enough to deck over about half the yard, but in this case covers a footprint of less than six feet by ten. I’m always surprised at what I’ll eventually find acceptable after struggling for any kind of idea for a long time. On the plus side, the use of materials is slightly more frugal than it would have been had I somehow found a way to make each level of the steps out of one large slab of solid wood. Also on the plus side, the design resulted in a set of stairs that will probably outlast the house. You could seriously drive a tank up into my house on these things.
The project spanned from mid-April right up through mid-September. In the next post: the details!
