Check it out!!

A little unexpected publicity =)

In celebration of our recent engagement, I thought I'd give Chris something that will last a long time... Home improvements!

While this may not be overly romantic, and doesn't even come close to comparing to the beautiful ring that he gave me, it's stuff that he's either wanted done for a long time or hadn't thought about and went "Oh, that would be seriously cool" when suggested. It's also stuff that I could build (mostly) myself, thus giving it the personal touch... Oh - he paid for most of the supplies =P

The water feature:

The water feature was done by first digging out the old garden bed to create the pond area. I used 40*40cm square concrete pavers to create the walls slightly higher than the paved area. I used treated pine to create a frame along the brick wall so that I could feed some poly tubing up from the pond to the waterfall reservoir at the top (which was made from various bits of plastic all coated in waterproofing). Waterproofed the covered the framing with fibro-cement sheeting. Waterproofed the fibro, then covered with Norstone rock wall (using rubberised waterproof tiling cement). Do you get the idea I wanted it waterproof =)? Then we attached the pond pump, filled with water, and away she goes!

Oh - and it makes a great drinks esky for parties!

Before	After

The deck:

The deck is something that he's been wanting done for a while, and has never bothered organising to have it built. In preparation of me telling them I wanted to build a deck, my parents gave me a mitre saw for christmas. It rocks for building decks!

The existing deck was problematic on two fronts: 1) it was too small to be usable. 2) it was too large to make the paved area surrounding it useful. The second point was another problem again in that it is pattern paved concrete which was not patterned beneath where the existing decking sat. So removal of the deck alone was not an option - it simply looked ugly. So here's my solution!

Before

After

Still a little work needs doing on it - but you see how it is going anyways!