128 Scout - Day 33: Burn, baby, burn
I got up early-ish today and moved the 14 concrete blocks into position behind the house. Interestingly enough, moving the blocks didn't wear me out nearly as much as trying to get the ground level using the garden rake where I was putting them. It didn't help that by 9am it was 89F with a heat index of 100F though. Ugh! I was originally planning on just using 8 of them, but once I'd gotten them in place I decided that I wanted one more row. So now I've got a nice little modular concrete pad that is 6 blocks wide x 4 blocks deep (approximately 8' x 5'4") at the back door to transition from the house to the yard.
I decided to tackle the porch light next, since my mounting block had arrived the other day. I removed the old lamp and cleaned out the old electrical box (which had apparently been very prone to trapping water and bugs). I had to use the dremel with a cutting disc and a tungsten carbide deburring bit to clear away some of the HardiePlank siding because the box was recessed behind it (or rather, the HardiePlank was installed directly over top of the old siding and the hole cut into it was very roughly done and mostly-but-not-quite full size. After looking at a bunch of mounting possibilities, including replacing the outlet box (which I really wanted to do, but ultimately decided was not worth it) I eventually devised a successful method of securing the new block/box to the original box with two very long screws and a couple of short pieces of threaded rod and nuts. Once I confirmed that this would work and basically got everything into position, I took some sandpaper to the mounting block to smooth out the casting seams along the side a little bit. Once I've got it caulked and mounted, I'll mask it off and paint it whitish-grayish so that it's not quite as out-of-place against the siding.
I also had dad come over and help with the burn pile. While I was working on the light fixture, he got a fire started at one edge of the burn pile. We tended to it for a while but evetually the densest and dryest part of the pile had burned away and it was struggling to keep going despite our constant efforts at keeping it pile up on itself. I went around to another side of the pile where there was still a small cluster of nice dry wood and got a fire going there, and when it was obvious that it would not burn out of control and that there wasn't much more we could do to tend to it, we left to go get some dinner.
After dinner, I came back and started a fire at another part of the burn pile, tended to it for a bit and then decided that there wasn't much I could do to keep it burning so I went inside, took a shower, and crawled into bed.