I've been asking for help

64 degrees - hurricane Sandy is not in the area yet and I had dry but windy weather for most of the day.

Yes, I've been asking for help from the girls all week and finally I got some.

Get to work!

Over the past couple days I painted all of the pillars and the extra foam material that I have with paint from the home center that costs only seven dollars.  It was possibly mixed incorrectly for a customer but was now cheap and I like how it looks - mostly gray with a little hint of green, which will be a nice base coat for a concrete or stone facade.  I also found a great deal on flat black spray paint for only ninety seven cents per can.  It took me eleven cans to cover the iron fence.

Painted the faces, sides, bottom and back.

Took a while to paint all of this.

I thought about painting Lucy black but she just had a bath.

Iron fencing finally looking a little like actual iron.

If you know me you know how much I like the pile of scrap wood that I had sitting on two pallets and under a tarp in the driveway that was leftover from the Pointed Playhouse project last year.  Without any prodding from those I live with I went through the stack and hauled eighty percent of it to the curb where it will be picked up on Monday by the city.

Can't believe I kept all of this so long.

I then broke apart the wood from the pallets, which I wanted to use to make a couple wood grave markers.  The rough sawn lumber used in the pallets is perfect to give the markers an old look.  I printed out several examples from the Internet and ended up making my own pattern that is similar to one in the picture below.

You can see the shape that I was going for in this image.

It takes a long time harvesting the wood by removing the rusted nails and cutting off the checked ends before I can work with the power tools.  Once the wood was cleaned up I was able to draw a pattern on one piece and use that to duplicate what I wanted on the others.  A little sanding, gluing and nailing and the grave markers came together.

Stacked pieces cut and sanded with the rough side up.

Cutting at the band saw.

These are the remaining boards that may turn in to a couple more markers.

It started to rain a little as one of the bands of the hurricane brushed by Hampton Roads but I was able to take my level and run out front and pound the two crosses into the ground.  I then grabbed the wheel barrow and shovel and made it look like Halloween was approaching.

The first two of hopefully many grave markers.

The caretaker's house behind the graveyard.

Lots of work still to do.

Well, that's about all for now.  We are headed off to the Greek Festival tonight and hurricane Sandy will be getting closer over the next couple days.  I'll probably be applying paint to the pillars to make them look old, fabricating headstones, making a costume for Lauren and helping Devon decorate the caretaker's house over the coming days.  More later.