Dog Run Make Over

June 24, 2008

So Nathan and I love projects. We like all different kinds of projects, especially ones that make our home and lives easier afterwards.

Sunday night I came home from work and told Nathan about a dog run idea I'd gotten from a home owner. We've been trying to figure out what to do since we moved in. In the morning we got up and decided we needed to re-vamp the dog run. Both the dogs are filthy every day from digging under the dog house - consequently so is our house. So, we took the dog house out, cleaned it really well, gathered the flagstone and made a great new pad for them to lay on, and returned the dog house.

We then decided to go for it. We decided we were going to lay a concrete path down the length of the side yard. We went to Home Depot to get the supplies. It took 5 trips in all.. two trips to haul 3,000 pounds of concrete, a trip for the cement mixer, a trip for the edging tool we thought we had, and finally a trip for a floodlight so we could finish all the prep work last night. We threw in the towel last night at 11:30pm having completed the prep. We were just shy of the right amount of wrought iron to stake the boards... please notice the 2 screwdrivers and bolt on the bottom left of the picture :) We took showers, Nathan moisturized his hands with triple antibiotic cream due to all the cuts and nicks, and we crashed.

Step three was enlist the help of a friend. We actually weren't planning on asking for help, but Casey found out what we were doing and offered to help. Only fools would turn the offer down, but we did give him an out if he decided he really didn't want to haul cement all morning on his day off. Thank God he still decided to help :) Casey and I manned the cement mixer while Nathan tended to the smoothing and edging on the actual path. We worked like dogs from about 6:30am - 11:00 to get the job done. Considering this included the clean up I think we made great time!

Casey and I got so efficient we had to quit for a while so Nathan could catch up....okay the truth is our batches of cement were so inconsistent Nathan had to wait for the soupy ones to tack up. Anyways, while waiting Casey was helping Nathan and I was cleaning as we went.

Here is the final product. We love it and are very pleased with ourselves. Hopefully this will keep the dogs happy, cool, and out of the dirt!

I decided I'd better get this blog up tonight as I don't think I'll be able to lift my arms tomorrow!