Lost Temple of Barbecue
Saturday, March 25th, 2023 04:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioSunny and 38F this afternoon, but windy. And, as is typical now on Saturdays, I slept in until almost 3PM.
But when me and the pets did get out into the back yard, I fetched my trenching shovel from the shed and took it to the edges of the old barbecue.
Yesterday I was calling it a brick box with a chimney, but then I realized... that's a barbecue! At any rate, this is the biggest hunk of it, where the chimney was.
That is a concrete slab, with bricks mortared onto it.
Underneath I've found some big hunks of limestone, and I'm sure that, like the coal clinkers, they were left laying around the property. But the limestones had been around a bit longer... about 55 years.
Not hard to believe, as this barbecue's been sitting out there for 75 years at this point, and I'm the first one to touch it.
This one chimney slab may not look too big in the photo, but it's easily 180 pounds. I'm gonna have to break it up somehow, before I can get rid of it.
------------{=0=}------------
6:45PM
Well, I looked all over the house, but I couldn't find my little sledge hammer! That would've been my only hope, today, for cracking that slab apart.
But, my low voltage garden lights were delivered today, along with extra wire and gel filled wire nuts. Six lamps in total.
So I went down in the basement and bypassed the timer, to turn the existing foundation lights on... and then I went out there and replaced the one that had gone bad on the north side of the house, and the new one lit up right away!
After that I ran some new wire off the last one in the chain, which was on the north side of the back room... extended it around the corner, and installed two more lights on the rear of the back room!.. which I've been meaning to do for three years now.
And now, I have three spares!
North side of the house. The light closer to us stopped working over a year ago. The other one's hidden by the gas meter.
Two over the basement hatch door, and one more on the north side of the kitchen... hidden by the chair there.
Three more on the north side of the back room. They could be spaced apart a little more, but it's fine.
You can also see that flex drain I was talking about, that needs to be trenched in.
These are the two I installed today, on the rear of the back room.
This is where the sacred peonies grow, along with tons of random leafy weeds.
Upper right is the Dr. Seuss light I installed last June... a big flared floodlamp on a long gooseneck to get it clear of the corner there, so I could better illuminate the back yard.
All of this... in the back, and on the north side, used to be in total darkness at night. It was that way my whole life... up until 2019.
------------{=0=}------------
8:55PM
I ordered a decent sledge hammer on Amazon... with a long handle and a dual purpose head... one side's flat, but the other is more of a wedge shape. It's got the full five stars with 1,104 reviews.
$62.00 but, there's more than just the old barbecue around here that needs busting up.
It's coming on Monday.
The plan is, when I get that dumpster, I'll throw all the rubble in there, along with the remains of the jungle gym and the shed.
------------{=0=}------------
This is the first Saturday where things are starting to feel normal, here alone in the house, in the post Dad era.
I think it helped that I was up and around, inside and out, with Snoop & Prowly following me everywhere.
At one point I was out in back, working on the barbecue... and went in through the basement hatch. Snoop followed me into the basement.
Then he followed me upstairs through Dad's room to look for something on the main floor.
Then I went out the front door, back into the back yard, and Prowly was out there.
Then I went in through the back door... then upstairs to the 2nd floor... then down outside the front door. One cat here. One cat there. Yvette in the kitchen as always.
And the back door was open for a while, so Yvette could go in and out of her dog yard at her whim.
So... it was just this experience of freely moving around through the whole house and the yard, taking care of things...
Without having to WORRY, about the cats escaping, or Dad getting upset, or confrontations between the dog and the cats, or the dog wanting to suddenly go for a long walk!
It was nice!
And it's nice that it's spring, and that I have this plan for the yard... and that, for this year at least, I'm not worrying about money!
Tomorrow I'll try to tackle the SCOP, in addition to the normal Sunday stuff like laundry.
°¦}
https://soundcloud.com/snoozefestaudio
But when me and the pets did get out into the back yard, I fetched my trenching shovel from the shed and took it to the edges of the old barbecue.
Yesterday I was calling it a brick box with a chimney, but then I realized... that's a barbecue! At any rate, this is the biggest hunk of it, where the chimney was.
That is a concrete slab, with bricks mortared onto it.
Underneath I've found some big hunks of limestone, and I'm sure that, like the coal clinkers, they were left laying around the property. But the limestones had been around a bit longer... about 55 years.
Not hard to believe, as this barbecue's been sitting out there for 75 years at this point, and I'm the first one to touch it.
This one chimney slab may not look too big in the photo, but it's easily 180 pounds. I'm gonna have to break it up somehow, before I can get rid of it.
Well, I looked all over the house, but I couldn't find my little sledge hammer! That would've been my only hope, today, for cracking that slab apart.
But, my low voltage garden lights were delivered today, along with extra wire and gel filled wire nuts. Six lamps in total.
So I went down in the basement and bypassed the timer, to turn the existing foundation lights on... and then I went out there and replaced the one that had gone bad on the north side of the house, and the new one lit up right away!
After that I ran some new wire off the last one in the chain, which was on the north side of the back room... extended it around the corner, and installed two more lights on the rear of the back room!.. which I've been meaning to do for three years now.
And now, I have three spares!
North side of the house. The light closer to us stopped working over a year ago. The other one's hidden by the gas meter.
Two over the basement hatch door, and one more on the north side of the kitchen... hidden by the chair there.
Three more on the north side of the back room. They could be spaced apart a little more, but it's fine.
You can also see that flex drain I was talking about, that needs to be trenched in.
These are the two I installed today, on the rear of the back room.
This is where the sacred peonies grow, along with tons of random leafy weeds.
Upper right is the Dr. Seuss light I installed last June... a big flared floodlamp on a long gooseneck to get it clear of the corner there, so I could better illuminate the back yard.
All of this... in the back, and on the north side, used to be in total darkness at night. It was that way my whole life... up until 2019.
I ordered a decent sledge hammer on Amazon... with a long handle and a dual purpose head... one side's flat, but the other is more of a wedge shape. It's got the full five stars with 1,104 reviews.
$62.00 but, there's more than just the old barbecue around here that needs busting up.
It's coming on Monday.
The plan is, when I get that dumpster, I'll throw all the rubble in there, along with the remains of the jungle gym and the shed.
This is the first Saturday where things are starting to feel normal, here alone in the house, in the post Dad era.
I think it helped that I was up and around, inside and out, with Snoop & Prowly following me everywhere.
At one point I was out in back, working on the barbecue... and went in through the basement hatch. Snoop followed me into the basement.
Then he followed me upstairs through Dad's room to look for something on the main floor.
Then I went out the front door, back into the back yard, and Prowly was out there.
Then I went in through the back door... then upstairs to the 2nd floor... then down outside the front door. One cat here. One cat there. Yvette in the kitchen as always.
And the back door was open for a while, so Yvette could go in and out of her dog yard at her whim.
So... it was just this experience of freely moving around through the whole house and the yard, taking care of things...
Without having to WORRY, about the cats escaping, or Dad getting upset, or confrontations between the dog and the cats, or the dog wanting to suddenly go for a long walk!
It was nice!
And it's nice that it's spring, and that I have this plan for the yard... and that, for this year at least, I'm not worrying about money!
Tomorrow I'll try to tackle the SCOP, in addition to the normal Sunday stuff like laundry.
°¦}
