In the same vein as my earlier post on housemodding, I’ve spent the weekend ‘modding’ my garden. Admittedly, this has very little to do with gadgets, unless you class a circular saw as a gadget.
Basically I’m trying to add capacity to the flat-space storage component of the garden. Imagine if every time you wanted to upgrade the capacity of your computer, you had to do some serious engineering just to stop the bits and bytes totally running out of the sides. This is what I had to do with the garden – a retaining wall is what the builder-types call it.
Don’t be fooled by the simplicity in the photo. This thing was a right bitch to get built. There was an existing retaining wall built with a back-slope to it, and we had planned to basically extend that retaining wall to the fence. This involved carefully measuring the angle and running a string-line so the new bit of wall lined up nicely. Then we discovered that I had stupidly purchased 200x50mm rough-sawn timber, when the existing retaining wall was built with 200x50mm dressed timber. Dressed timber basically means “well, this used to be 200×50, but now it’s more like 190×40, with a smooth finish”. Bastards.
Never mind, the skill saw made short work of ‘dressing’ the rough sawn timber, and we managed to make the bastards line up, by hook or by crook. Or by just nailing the buggery out of it. Now we just have to shift a metric fuckload of dirt to fill in behind the retaining wall. The mini-excavator at the equipent hire place is looking very inviting right now.
A metric fuckload? I’m unfamiliar with your unit of measure Ben…although I guess most building supply places would know a conversion rate
Yeah a metric fuckload is around about 3.5 “blimey that’s a lot of dirt” measurements.
And an imperial fuckload is something you get someone else to move, of couse. As in ” I say, entire nation of subjugated people, move that mountain would you? It’s blocking my sun. Ta ever so, and pass the chutney.”