Hubby with his L-square and me with my string began our search for that 90 degree angle. Farther and farther out on the old dock we went amazed at the distance this was taking us from the seawall of the proposed new dock! Now he is beginning to worry that with the angle we were creating, that the new dock would infringe upon our neighbors water. We pound a nail, tie off the string and go back to the property edge and try to eyeball whether or not this will be a problem. With everyone having gone with the natural contour of the waters edge, we have all created optical illusions as to property boundaries. Each of us has a survey as to where our property extends into the lake but we cannot find the surveyors stakes! If there are any we will need SCUBA equipment to find them. It is a lengthy but hushed discussion and finally we decide that we will pull back a foot and live with the fact that the new dock will not be exactly parallel to the other two docks but close enough and infringement on neighbors portion of the lake will be negligible if any. Personally I believe we will both be in a better place before anyone even questions it as neighbor does not live next door and his renters do not care about what goes on between his landlord and us. We will let our heirs worry about possible infringements unless 7 years goes by and the question then becomes moot.
So with our string as our guide we slowly set the other two posts. Now it is getting late in the day, so we start setting up for tomorrow. We measure how deep the water is at the distance outward we want to set our next three posts. To do this we take a stew can tied to a string and wade out the prescribed footage at the approximate angle from each set post then measure the string adding the distance above water we will want to build the decking. We figure ten foot posts should work. We shower, get into dry clothes and set back off to Home Depot for three 10 foot posts and two eight foot posts. The eight footers are for the beginning of another brainstorm I have come up with...."You wanna do what with what?" We return home, unload and tote our cargo back to the lake. We have bowling the next two days. Tomorrow at 9 AM and the next day at 1 PM.
After dinner we do a little dismantling of the old dock. In the two boards we want to remove there are a total of twenty one screws. Of these twenty one screws seven will not budge. Another fly in the ointment..we look at each other and laugh because we now expect this sort of thing. We have two choices, use a hacksaw to cut the screws or carefully pry the boards pulling the heads of the screws through the wood hoping for as little damage as possible because we need these boards. We go with the path of least resistance and pry. It is a piece of cake and we are lucky. But look, the seven screws are still stuck in the dock. We decide we can cut them off at our leisure at some later date. We laugh again.
Sitting on the one dock that is intact we watch the setting sun and discuss plans for tomorrow. We will start with the post which will have to be set the farthest from the seawall, and at the greatest depth. The first post is four and a half feet from the seawall and with a twelve foot board from the old dock we will go out another seven and a half feet. Then we will cantilever another four feet farther. Seven and a half feet farther out is up to my chin, and hubby is an easy seven inches taller than I am. We start to talk about which son is the tallest and laugh again. The cantilever bottom will be far below the surface so we will screw this in place on the post before we set it. Ahhh! We are geniuses! We cannot wait for tomorrow.
As the sun sets we turn our thoughts to the newest brainstorm. I have suggested that once we finish the new dock, and complete renovations on the old dock, that we then roof over half the old dock so we will have one area lakeside under which to sit in shade or rain. Hubby thinks this is a good idea and doable. I ask if making the roof a hip roof rather than gable would be okay. He thinks this would be cool, kind of like a gazebo effect. Neither of us has had experience with hip roofs but we think we can do it. I will tell you that my Dad was a carpenter by trade and when Hubby's family moved to town and his Dad was remodeling the house they bought, my Dad was his Dad's mentor and Hubby and I were brought up carpenter's helpers so we do have some experience which we have built on (pardon the pun) over the years. We are both skilled with hand and power tools and have little if any fear of any type of construction though most of our experience until the past two years has been land based.
Our five dogs seem to enjoy all this outside activity. The newness of a dock without railing seems to fascinate them and they lie as close to the edge as they dare and look down at turtles and fish swimming by. Only one of them really likes being in the lake but even he will not jump off the dock although with us both in the water I have thought a couple of times that he was seriously considering it and I had to admonish him not to try. I know they remember the otters and with every break in the surface their ears perk up, a reminder to us that we do have a time schedule to with which to keep. Otters are mostly nocturnal, but they are still about at dawn and late evening. By then we are usually in the house. But in late November and and into early spring after the otter babies are ready to leave the den, they are more active and keep different hours. Baiting all the dogs around the lake seems to be a favorite pasttime and they are perfectly capable of injuring if not drowning a dog if the chance arises. I have watched them attempt to scale a four foot chain link fence to get to one of the neighborhood dogs, an inquisitive Border Collie named Sarah. Otters are fun to watch, but they are dangerous...and destructive. One morning I watched two babies ascend a neighbors dock, tear open the seat of their upholstered swing, pull out the stuffing and commence to race each other inside the plucked remains. It was quite amusing to watch the lumps of there little bodies race around and around inside the remains of that swing. I wondered what the neighbors would think the next time they went down to their dock and saw for the first time what remained of their Martha Stewart porch swing!
Well, enough for tonight. Another day another chapter.
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