Presenting … The Saturn Walkway

Visualizing things is not what you’d call my strong suit. But I’d always imagined I’d turn the huge pallet of very fine cedar decking that came with the weeHouse into a walkway that would lead down to the house from the driveway (once we cleared out the pontoon, motorboat, astroturf carpet and assorted trash and weeds). I just wasn’t sure how it would all come together.

Mike, our scrapper-scavenger-builder-entrepreneur friend, suggested we use some I-beams he’d salvaged after a mobile home burned down near his home in south-central Minnesota. Swell idea!

Over a recent long weekend, Mike, along with the still-healing Chris and my up-for-any-adventure friend, Aaron, worked like mad and got the Saturn Walkway built.

Here's the story:

In the beginning, there was an enormous pallet of quality deck pieces.

 

Mike drove this trailer of I-beams verrry slowly through the Twin Cities and up to Loveless.



We staked out the expected pathway, and picked our starting point at the weeHouse.

Mike scrawled some numbers and pictures into my reporter's notebook and got out the torch.



Chris and Aaron started digging post holes.



 

Oops! Call before you dig. What is this? Copper wrapped in electrical tape?



Mike figured out how to lock the I-beams to create stairs and gentle sloping walkway.

Aaron and Chris mixed a slurry of concrete for the posts.

At setting sun, the final I-beams reach the driveway!



Aaron prepares his camping hammock. (Before dawn the next morning, an owl swooped so low Aaron felt the power of its wings.)



A new day: Bring on the deck -- which Chris disassembled b/c it was too heavy to move otherwise.

Aaron digs in.

Lookin' good!

Welcome to the weeHouse. (Visualize with giant ferns and railing.)



Saturn Sky, deck and "my" weeHouse in their former lives.