Sunday, May 31, 2009

Turkish Adventure

We have now been on our Turkish Adventure for about a week. It has been amazing. So far we've been to Istanbul and Cappdoccia, and we still have Selcuk, Fethiye and Kas to come.

Istanbul is a wonderful clean city, with excellent public transport. I wish I could say the same about Bmore. :-) Haghia Sofia and the Blue Mosque were pretty, but the Egyptian spice bazaar and all of the street food is even better. I loves me some street food. We then headed to Capadoccia and have been doing activities that would frighten our mothers. Things like hot air ballooning one day after 1 died and 8 were injured, riding an ATV around to different sites, and renting a scooter to head to a winery the next town over. It has been a blast, and we are taking lots of pictures.

And now it is time to return to drinking my beer on a comfy patio and watching the peple walk past. Life is good.

P.S. The loud group of Croatians that were on yesterdays tour just sat down behind us. *sigh*. Looks like we have to find a new spot.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Fantastic Fencing!

I found the holy grail of fence materials. Well, at least I think it's the bees knees. I went with a pvc fence material made by timbertech. I'll use this material to build the gate and the garbage corral. Monica commented to the last post with a fence style suggestion. She has great taste, as I had the same style in mind.



I've seen some other horizontal fences with varying board size, but a lot of these required applying lumber to both sides of the fence so you wouldn't see though the slats. This would have increased my fence material costs. Since I am using a PVC fence, I also wanted to avoid ripping the boards, and this design lets me just hang the boards as is. I figured I can do this design with a minimal amount of labor.

So why did I choose PVC over a composite or lumber? One reason is weight. If the back gate were double faced with trex, it would have weighed over 200 lbs. I decided to single side it, but 100 lbs would still have made it susceptible to sagging. A PVC gate will be closer to 60 lbs. Also, the composite materials (like trex) still have wood fiber in them. Wood rots over time, and can mold/mildew over time. Not good. The reason I didn't go with lumber is I didn't want to deal with warping, or the maintenance over time. And the real kicker of why I went with PVC? The local lumber yard was selling it for at about 25% off. Score! It looks sexy too.



I'm hoping to also build some custom 4' planters to hang on the walls eventually, and maybe build a bench on top of the 2' planter bed. That is if the Queen approves my plans. :-)