What's on the agenda?

With the summer here in Florida winding down and cooler weather arouind the corner, it is time to plan my next  project.  What back breaking, sweat inducing, hair brained idea have I come up with?  The bath in our master bedroom needs to be remodeled (that is quite a bit of inconvenience, not to mention the mess.)  The dishwasher died and needs to be replaced (but I almost never used it anyway.)  I bought a 3 foot high lighthouse in a yard sale which needs placement and wiring (about 50 feet from the house on the lakefront.) 

I don't think I am ready yet for those projects.  Maybe later.  And the projects I haven't quite finished?........

We have two docks connected by walkways along the seawall but it only covers about thirty eight of the fifty foot seawall. That leaves twelve or so feet to fill.  So I was thinking...how about a twelve by  twelve foot dock to finish off the lakefront?  I mean the last thirty eight feet weren't too hard and we had never done this kind of work before I guess someone 30 years younger who knew what they were doing could probably have knocked it out in a week rather than the two months it took us.  But it was enjoyable watching the fruits of our labor slowly taking shape...and unshape... and reshape until we got it right. Then there was that  little shrub we thought would be cute if left where it grew and if we just built around it.  It died! Not from anything we did to it.  It just died.  It is still there, leafless, twiggy, bare except for the small racoon lawn ornaments we shoved precariously into its branches.  We cannot decide what to put in its place.

When you are in your 60's with arthritis and degenerating discs, a do-it-yourself project of this magnitude requires careful planning.  We have been planning to go to Home Depot for 2 months now.  Maybe tomorrow.  We figured we'd start with 3  4X4's  to set along the seawall as a jump off point.  The water is pretty shallow there so they wouldn't have to be too long.  I am thinking they need to be set at least 3 feet under the lakebed, in 2 feet of water and about 2 feet above water. Of course they do not come in 7 foot lengths, which I think is inconvenient but in this case will probably work out at least for two of them.   The seawall is not exactly square with the property boundaries but I want the dock to be. That means two posts will be in deeper water than the first in order to square things up.  I am not sure how much deeper because we have not yet figured out how to square things up!   Yet.  Stay tuned!