Start of the Finishing Touches

Remember this photo that appeared on the blog post I wrote a few days ago?

The story behind it was that we weren't sure whether to bother cladding the bases of the pergola to hide the brackets and screws holding it down to the wall, or just paint them the same colour so that they would blend away with the rest of the posts. 

Cladding the bases, is it a necessary detail worth doing, adding extra time to the finishing of the project? Or save ourselves that time by just painting the brackets away, blending them with the rest of the posts so that they would be barely noticeable once that's done?

To help us decide, I painted all of the bases and brackets that day to see how it would look once they had been painted (the brackets had been left unpainted previously, assuming then that we would definitely put the cladding on). The thought at the time that if they were barely noticeable then we'd leave them, if not then we'll clad them. Also we decided to sleep on it for a few days to see how we feel and make a decision after.

Well a few days has passed and yes, it was still noticeable to us and yes, the idea of leaving them exposed was more likely to bother us. Since we had originally planned on cladding them we decided that we ought to really stick with it, no point scrimping now (and we had to decide before that pond is filled, for once it's full of water there will be no turning back).

Sometimes, the delays to the finishing of the project are self inflicted by our attention to detail. But I have to admit, I feel that's a good thing.

So this weekend we got crackin' with measuring and cutting the wood for cladding, but what took the longest time was chiselling out the notches where the brackets are so the cladding will be flush. They had to be chiselled one by one as each bracket is in a slightly different place then measured to fit. None of them were fastened on though, that will be done on another day as they all have to be painted indoors first.

It's going to cost us extra time but it feels right, we made the right decision.

But it wasn't just chiselling that we did today. A few other jobs too like fastening on the protective grill on the surface skimmer (so smaller fish won't be sucked in accidentally), and with the mild temperatures this weekend the small water feature is now up and running.

Skimmer guard on - another little job off the list

Fortunately the temperatures were mild enough to allow some play with water as we set up this water feature. The stainless steel geyser had to be adjusted to the desired height and for that you had to dip in to make the adjustments. Thank goodness it wasn't too cold to dip in, and now it's up and running. All that's left to be done is to apply the slate mulch and rocks at the bottom as planned.

Time to test the little water feature!

Filling up nicely...

Someone's curious...

There's something missing here...

Voila! And more importantly the sound it is creating is just right

With this collection of little jobs, it feels like the start of the finishing touches. I know technically we started the finishing touches ages ago, but with all of the major jobs ticked off what we have been doing now are relatively minor tasks. They are all, however, very visual and gives us clues to how it will all look like in the not so distant future.

Mark :-)