Week 12 - Commencing 16th May

PHASE #2 

Rain predicted for much of this week. The hope is by the weekend Ben and I will have dismantled the ramp. There's 2 massive beams (See below) marked (F)

These are going to be used to create raised beds, one at the top on the left hand side against the fence where I normally grow raspberries and Tayberries (c) and at (E) in the patio area. In this one I'm hoping to plant the Wisteria, Honeysuckle and Bourgainvilea. The dirt from under the ramp will be go in the raised beds and help level the lawn up and provide the top soil.

(A)

The Beams

(B)

Earth for

Top

soil 

Raised beds

Tomorrow if it's not raining while I'm at work I think Ben intends to unravel the Honeysuckle and try and save that to grow up the adjacent wall. We've still got a bag of small rubble and there's a fair bit of concrete that come out of this demolition and we've got 8 big paving slabs. We've also got the best part of a tonne of topsoil just to the right of this shot here that's ear-marked to level the grass off at some point.

Monday 17th - Nothing doing, rained all night Sunday and all day today, there's currently standing water on the clay area, everything is sodden. Idea contemplating using the big slabs and the slabs currently in the bottom area in the shady zone (A) to the right of the steps near the compost bin. 

Tuesday 18th - Sunnier today, but still loads of showers. Ben worked on the Honeysuckle and removed most of the fence part of the hand rail, but that's about it.

Wednesday 19th More sun than showers today and when I got home it was pretty dry so I did some work on the ramp...

First move was to crow bar the rest of the bars from the fence part of the ramp.

At this stage I was still trying to keep the Honeysuckle intact, but it was increasingly getting in the way and moved it onto the ramp. I then had a go at some of the slats to see how easy or difficult they'd be.

The top slat in this shot above was tricky because of the close proximity to the plastic of the double glazed doors, but with some fiddling and crow-baring I got it out and the rest will be easy? 

Then I decided the hand rail would come down as well so I sawed that off using a bow saw and I'll dismantle it tomorrow or some day soon.

Tomorrow if the weather is with me, I'll try and get all the slats off leaving just the massive beams to sort. Looking at the beams I can't see what it is that's holding them on the wall on the left hand side, so they may be a problem and it's these beams I'm using for the raised beds. 

The Honeysuckle was hacked back out of the way and that'll hopefully have its day next summer? No signs of any of the deliveries as yet, but that's giving me time research the patio slabs and how to prep that stage. 

20th May

Another crap day today weather-wise, grey cool, but thankfully no too much rain. The Gabions arrived when no-one was at home and the delivery company left them outside the house! They may have been there for a few hours, but thankfully no-one stole them! 

That's it, the ramp is no more. The next move that should happen is we get rid of some of the rubbish, because we can't move at the moment what with all the crap we've accumulated. The earth has got to come out now from under the ramp and I reckon I'll bag that up at the top. The top soil though I'll continue to put in the yellow bag seen in this image above. The other thing I should do is cut the massive beams down to the size they need to be and remove all the nails and put the wood into position. I need to borrow a mates circular saw to make the cutting easier, so I'll try and sort that tonight. 

Sunday 23/5/21 End of week 12.

Joe cutting off the nails and tidying up the other support beam that was a part of the ramps main structure. This is going to be a part of a raised bed at the base of the 'Sunny wall'. 

As I've done this and other people have looked at the situation some issues seem to be arising. This concrete plinth (A) is supported underneath by the breeze blocks you can see, but not only that it's a long plinth that goes through the wall and extends into my neighbors garden. Furthermore, the big beam (B) which I was hoping to take down and use elsewhere in the garden is bolted together with the neighbors beam on the other side and it appears to be an integral part of the fence, so has to stay.

So, at the moment I'm not sure how important the breeze blocks are in supporting the plinth or how far they go down? Potentially it's a 5' wall which means rubble trouble e.g. I'll have too much of it. Looking at the problem the plinth, will be inside the Gabion and will be hidden if everything works out okay. At the moment I'm thinking that we'll cut a hole in the Gabion and slide it over the plinth and then support it inside the plinth by a stack of bricks if that's needed, but it does pose a problem...

This image below show that I've spread the big concrete slabs out over the top part for the moment just to alleviate the mud issue.

The image below shows what I was doing most of the time - moving the earth/clay from under the ramp. The Topsoil is being sivved into the yellow bag for Phase 5 (The final phase).

Phase 2 is this Gabion I'm working on now; Phase 3 will be the removal and replacement of the steps; Phase 4 will be the patio stone and phase 5 the top part of the garden and the re-seeding of the grass/lawn. I suppose there may be a phase 6 with all the snagging? 

(Above) This is the 'Sunny wall' and you can see the beam which will make the 'Raised bed' edge. But Ben and Joe didn't quite cut enough off for it to fit in the gap yet. 

(Below) Everything's been moved back up to the shady end for the moment again.

The image below shows where the dirt that is currently coming out from under where the ramp was is going, this is being used to level the garden up prior to re-grassing it during phase 5. Once we have some nice weather and it dries up a bit I'll get the roller out and roll this flatter. The white bag on the right of the image is also being filled with clay and at the moment it's looking like I'm going to have excess dirt/clay which is an issue. 

The bag on the left is the excess clay bag and the one on the right is rubble and that's pretty full, but the majority of that will go in the Gabions once they're in place. 

All the wood that was in the garden is currently outside the back gate, I was hoping to take it to the municipal dump, but reading on-line they're taking of queues up to 2.5 hours long, so I'm going to leave that till the 1/2 term holiday. I reckon at that point I'll also chuck away a lot of the plant pots and stuff I've got clogging up the garden as well as the bins that I use as water butts as once this is all sorted there's no where for them to go anymore. The compost bin may also go!