Summer Tasks - Parking and Securing (part 2)

Following on from the theme of excessively large deliveries, I got carried away with my search for a solution to securing the field. 

My neighbour David (ever generous with his help) suggested I try a railway sleeper for a gate post. He suggested that they don't cost that much and last a long time if you buy reclaimed ones. 

It seems that really, if you want a sleeper, reclaimed ones are the only way to go, the ones garden centres sell are really just fat fence posts and are nowhere near as chunky as a genuine railway sleeper - or as interesting. 

So, off I went looking for a bargain. Many places will happily charge you £35 for a battered old sleeper full of bolts , cracks and holes, so when I discovered a place selling them for half that price, I got excited - and in exchange for a take away, the family indulged me a shopping trip. 

I am not going to advertise the vendor here as they were not terribly reliable and I wasn't able to negotiate a discount on 20x sleepers - I expect a bit of a favour when bulk buying - perhaps free delivery, but got nothing. In fact the delivery went up £5 somewhere along the line so I technically, slightly over paid. 

Anyway, you would be forgiven for wondering why the delivery went from 1x sleeper for a gate post, to 20x sleepers. The simple answer is, the timber I saw looked really good and decent value and I saw a lot of potential and decided to blow a chunk of this years budget on sleepers for future use while I was paying a lot of money for the delivery. 

I purchased the following :

2x Grade A Oak Sleepers - for gate posts. 
6x Grade A Softwood Sleepers - for bench making. 
12 Grade B Softwood Sleepers - for general landscaping. 

Total bill, £500! Ouch. 


Delivery was tricky as usual with the steep drive, and lifting 20x sleepers down without gloves was painful and plenty of antique timber became lodged into my skin in the process. 

Once I had £500 worth of sleepers on the drive I was itching to get the gate posts in to secure the permitter in case anyone took a shine to them. 



A long and hot mornings graft, with the ever reliable and helpful neighbour David, and we have 2x handsome looking gateposts. They look superb and once the concrete has gone off, we can finally shut the gate reliably. 




More on what happens to the other sleepers in the later article. 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tallywhacker Wood - Open for Business

Image
 So, September 2nd was a bit of a milestone for the project. We both named the field, and also officially opened the permissive paths. It was a big deal for me - so I made a big deal of it - and invited some family and friends to come and make a day of it with a picnic.  The weather was hugely kind and my friends/neighbours/family were also hugely kind. The sun showed up and so did lots of lovely people. We even had family here from Australia.  We did a little picnic-ing , a little wine drinking, a lot of chatting and a bit of tree planting.  I had , in recent weeks dug in and installed some signage (see previous blog entry) to mark the new paths and confirm the field naming. It was the first time most visitors had seen them so it was nice that we could do all of this on one sunny day.  My parents performed the ribbon cut and officially named the wood and opened the paths.  So it was great to have moved onto to a new phase in the projects life - it feels as...
Read more

Naming Signing & Paths

Image
  So, in what seems like a decent milestone, the project now has an "official" name.  I give you, "Tallywhacker Wood". A name suggested by a swimmy friend Kate, I think it rolls of the tongue rather well. No fnar. Absolutely no fnar.  As soon as it was suggested by Kate (after asking a group of friends for suggestions) it stuck, and it was, I think, meant to be. So that is that, job done.  As for the signage, well that is ongoing. I constructed a signage board which I am happy with, and went with a home printed/laminated A4 sheet and some A6 images for the fence post signing. This I was also happy with, until I visited again 3 weeks later and found all the colour is fading extremely rapidly from the home inkjet printing and in another 3 weeks I suspect it will be invisible.  A local printer has suggested using the same material as is used on outdoor printed banners. I am going to try this, hopefully the resolution is high enough and it should at least be fade re...
Read more

We Benched - And Made Schrödinger's Bench

Image
 Having purchased twelve railway sleepers four years ago "for making things" and so far, having used only two (for gateposts) and sold two, they were really getting in the way and given "benches" were one of the original plans for them, I felt I had better crack on.  I had one sleeper cut into three bits (to make legs) years ago, after that it was just the headache of getting them on site, notching bits out of the top sleeper so it sat nicely and them concreting them in.  Given it is tricky moving a sleeper around on your own, I was very lucky to have my friend Mr Peaches to assist me for the final install. And he did a great job.  There is now a nice spot to sit and enjoy the view. Or rest on the way up the hill.  Productivity always declines when the Sky Dog is on site.
Read more