Mid-Atlantic Gardening: Spring Projects Anyone?, 1 by rcn48

rcn48 wrote:
Rick said it was never going to work - he should know better by now - NEVER is not in my vocabulary! LOL We were at Lowes last week and he knew I was anxious to get started on this project and tried to encourage me to use tiles instead. Sure, there were some nice options but I didn't really want to spend any money on this project and I was convinced I could make it work with the free materials (rocks) I already had :) However, one thing I didn't have were black polished rocks so I did have to buy those at Walmart and also picked up another bag of a little larger polished rock - total investment so far...$7.00 :) I used a piece of thin styrofoam insulation we had on hand for a backer and started arranging the rocks. We also had thin strips of wood which I cut to size and painted black for the blades of grass. FIVE HOURS later, I was ready to get something to "glue" it all together - failed plan!! My idea was to just pour a thick coat of some type of epoxy over it to hold everything in place but I couldn't find a product which was weatherproof or recommended for outdoor use :( After all that work I was "almost" convinced that Rick was right, it would never work!

Plan B - a quick trip to Lowes the next morning to buy cement backerboard and Liquid Nails! I spread Liquid Nails on the backerboard and begrudgingly (is that a word? LOL) transferred all the stones, one by one, on my second attempt to reconstruct the design. It took me most of the day last Saturday and late in the afternoon, with one-third still left to transfer, I ran out of Liquid Nails :( I was back at it early Sunday morning after a quick trip to the hardware store and it was finally done by noon! It's still going to take a lot more work before the whole project is done but this is the plan. We're going to make a wood frame for it, paint it black and then treat the whole piece with some type of marine varnish, probably several coats to protect it. Next up is to get the column constructed. We have the cement blocks and mortar but I need to collect rocks to face it with from the creek. Last but not least, I still need to figure out how to mount the darned thing :( The dragonfly lantern I got for Christmas will be the last addition to the top - the outside battery operated candle which turns off/on automatically arrived yesterday so I'm ready!

I'm running out of time before we start to travel for shows and I still want to get my Clay Pot Lady done - looks like I better get busy!