Construction Zone

The catio is taking shape, but that's about all. When Construction Man began work yesterday morning, right away, he ran into some architectural problems. It's easier to show than to explain. Walk this way, and please don't step on the butterfly.

He had his 4 x 4's all cut and everything was looking good. Problem #1 is that our deck slants downward by about 2 inches. This is to allow for drainage. We had to have the deck rebuilt a couple of summers ago. The original owner/builder of the house took advantage of lax code enforcement in our rural county, and the deck was not originally built to code. It was quite a complicated (not to mention expensive) process to rebuild it and bring it up to code. Adding a slight slope was part of that effort. This deck is also the roof of the daylight basement below, and so it has a membrane surface that serves as a roof. The slope is not so much that one would notice, until one tries to build a level structure intended to sit on the sloped surface.

Problem #2 is that the original 8 x 10 size was not wide enough to accommodate both the door and window of the house. It attaches to the house with upright beams. At 10 feet, it overlaps either the door or the window, and that won't work.

That meant going back to the lumber store for another 4 x 4 and extending the catio out another two feet. It will end up 8 x 12 feet, which will make Mr. Smitty happy. Watch your fingers here.

With a new piece cut, it extends well beyond the window and still fits inside the edge of the deck.

As for the drainage and leveling problem, he cut some pieces that essentially shim the catio at it's outermost edge. This will allow water to drain from the membrane deck surface, and it will bring the catio level.

As you might guess, it was an hours long process just getting this "foundation" in place. And with the afternoon heat, this is as far as he took it yesterday. Our hours of sunlight extend well into the evening as we approach the longest day of the year. He'll have some time to work on this in the evenings when he gets home from work. It's still a long way from being finished.

Smitty is growing more impatient with the restrictions on his liberty. We had him out several times again yesterday. He's on high alert whenever we're outside.

He's still being well-behaved and not running off while we're outside. The heat is part of it. He likes staying in the shade where we are.

What's he looking at anyway?

He's looking off toward the trailer where there are many squirrels residing among the rocks. Do you see it?

How about now?

While catio construction was going on, I was at work on the 6th Wheel Estate block. This month's colors for the RSC16 are aqua with a hint of lime green. I was able to get all the pieces fused down yesterday. Today, I'll work on the top-stitching. That shouldn't take too long.

I'll be linking up to:

This morning I stitched on Mumm's the Word as far as I could without moving my hoop. I'm enjoying this more, although I'm finding it difficult to pop my knots through the fabric with that #8 Perle cotton thread.

Some of the pieces are very small and it's hard to keep the stitching even when I'm taking such big stitches. Also, I wasn't sure what to do around the stars. I just stitched around them as evenly as I could. It looks pretty good. With so many pieces in this scrappy quilt, the back loses all sense of any design. It just looks like a whole bunch of random stitches. This will be a quilt best viewed from the front.

After I finish here, I'll need to get out and water the potted annuals and check on things in the greenhouse. I'll get Smitty out with me for a little while at least. He likes to spend these sunny mornings toasting himself on his kitty pole. It's warm already this morning, and he got too hot. That's okay because it's just a step over onto the top of the china cabinet where the surface is nice and cool.

Warm cat...cool belly.

We're gearing up for a family get-together at the beach this coming weekend. Time for me to start thinking about food. But then, I'm always thinking about food, so what's the difference?