I'm trying to imagine the reaction 30 years from now when the new property owners decide to do some landscaping and they keep running into all these strange rivers of concrete just below the surface.

My experience of digging new vegetable beds suggests when you stick a spade in the ground you have about a 50% probability of running into a spot where some builder decided to bury his rubble rather than take it to the dump. However that's less than the 80% chance of digging up strange hopefully not human bones

My back yard butts up to a creek and they filled/flattened it with all kinds of random stuff. It's almost impossible to dig by hand.

If I ever sell my house, it will most definitely get bulldozed. So, there will be heavy equipment to clean up my mess.

I was talking about this with someone last night and it occurred to me that whoever buys this will likely bulldoze the house but keep the garage. It's a might fine structure.

This porch thing is going to put me in my grave.

I sent pictures to the engineer. I explained that the footprint of the porch was reduced and the footings were move in accordingly. I explained that they were exactly the same only moved proportionately to the size of the smaller porch.

They are now trying to charge me an additional "$500 for additional load path analysis for the footings"

I am way to angry to respond to this right now.

On another note, we had a pretty nasty storm come through last night. I thought I came out of it unscathed but not so fast. This will be my weekend project.

I typed up a really nasty email to the engineering firm then waited to cool down some, then deleted it.

So, I sent a lengthy email explaining that the width of the porch has been reduced a foot, the sonatube piers moved in proportionately, leaving the footing dimenions exactly what was originally specified. I told them I would not pay for any extra "load analysis" given the load is now less than the original specifications called for. The email was polite but the point about extra unnecessary fees was driven home. We'll see how it goes.

I also shot off an email to the guy that did my foundation asking for the engineer he uses to sign off on his work.

Now, off to do some tree trimming.

So, it has been a while since I ordered the cabinet face for a trash can roller outer thingy. I called Lowe's to see what was going on. "It's here", she said. Thanks for letting me know. But, she said they didn't have the microwave I bought in stock. I'm pretty sure they could have ordered it with the cabinet but, well, they didn't. So I have to wait for the microwave.

I'm not really sure how to do this cabinet thing. Getting the wine rack off I think is going to be really difficult without messing up the cabinet frame. It more than likely has some pretty strong wood glue holding it together. I need to do some research.

In the mean time, I chopped up the limbs that the storm took down and stacked them by the curb. I am one tired puppy.

The second pic is where a tree fell down on the Mopac fence. The workers just took the fence down. I now have a lovely view of the concrete barrier and the highway.

Finished tree cleanup today. Not much else.

One pain in the butt when you are doing this sort of thing is trash removal. There is so much construction debris but having a dumpster sit in your driveway all the time isn't very cost effective. So, I just fill up my trash can every week. Not only is there a lot of "stuff" but I have to cut up the "stuff" to fit properly. It's almost it's own project. This week it was one of the pallets the concrete came on. I'll have 3 more pallets just from porch "stuff" to get rid of. Two of them pretty big.

pallets are really fun to burn, as long as thats legal where you live.

Probably not legal but that wouldn't stop me. Hadn't thought of it. I have a big hole in the ground that would be perfect. Excellent pro tip.

Around here you can put things like pallets on the curb with a sign saying they're free and someone will pick them up within a day or two.

Pallet economy yo, there was an article floating about recently about that.

Alternatively, build compost heap containers out of them.

Ok, so this is going to sound dumb, but pallets are hot right now... put it on craigslist and some crazy wannabe decorator will come snap them up and turn them into a couch or wall art or a table or something equally crazy.

Pallet Decor

Wow. One man's trash I guess.

Good to know. Thanks.

Sure thing and things are looking great

These things crack me up. It's an entire community of people who don't seem to be aware that you can buy lumber for a very reasonable cost. How little does somebody's time have to be worth to justify spending hours obtaining, disassembling and re-purposing a pallet to save $15?

Yes, but see, then they can post on their blog this amazing thing that they built for FREE and get it posted on pinterest and lots of traffic, because who doesn't want amazing stuff for free. They just don't spill that it took hours upon hours of disassembling and sanding and tons of splinters to get the wood suitable to work with.

Yeah but would that wood have the _character_ you get from pallet wood?

I pulled apart some pallets to partition my allotment into beds. It was definitely a waste of effort. And the wood was junky, I doubt it would have looked good turned into anything.

Otoh, when we finally move house I'm going to use some scaffolding planks to build tables for my pottery.

There's something to be said for the recycling aspect of it - especially compared to just burning the pallets.

It's not much, but it's something...

That you make? or pottery you've purchased? If the former, is there info/pics in 2+2 somewhere? Don't want to derail bigger's blog, so if not I'll pm you.

Yes, no, I don't think so. I have a wheel I throw on (very haphazardly), but right now no access to a kiln so I'm in a lull, but when we move my medium term plan is to build a gas fired rocket kiln.

/derail.

Pallets are always going to be close to the lowest quality wood (for very obvious reasons). I agree how little people value their own labour.

Pallet discussion > bigger complaining about getting rid of trash

I'm wondering if there's a market for broken tile, sheetrock scraps, and random yard rocks.

Broken Tile
Yard Rock Art

Can't help you with sheetrock scraps, I'm afraid.

It's not just the labor that gets me, it's the energy. People are feeling good about themselves because they recycled something, but they drove their Honda Fit 10 miles to do it, they used up a bunch of consumable supplies to work it, and they fed themselves extra calories to make it happen. All of those things take a toll, which almost certainly eclipses any benefit gained.

There are plenty of examples of re-purposing that I wholeheartedly support when the economic, ecological or cultural situation justifies it. Pallets, imo, fall far short in every way.