Party Prep: Benches & Driveway

Only two days to go before the gathering so I needed to prepare seating and parking for guests. I started off by walking two cinder blocks and a ten foot two by eight across the property to create a bench that skirts the horse shoe pits. My next move was to carry another two blocks and board up to create seating around the fire ring. Thankfully the two are close enough to each other to hold conversation between benches. There was another two blocks so I got a shorter board and created a forty-eight inch wide bench just outside the kitchen / food prep area window, one of the three new windows the yurt now has. I was onto the driveway after soaking the benches with bleach and soapy water then scouring them down to the fresh golden color of southern yellow pine with a steel wire brush. I needed to create a pad to lay under the rebar to spread the load of the traffic over bare soil. I was lucky to have had the waste wool and canvas from the rotted sections of the original yurt construction to use as the base in similar fashion to the old carpet I used on the other sections as a pad. After staking it all down I gave it the test and the van did well enough to use for the party. Much more reinforcement and stronger/deeper stakes will be needed for regular usage to ensure I can ingress and egress during the winter months. One thing is for certain: the lower angle of the sun means my solar setup, the yurt, and the grassy opening are now shadowed and shaded by trees for almost the entire day... Tags: #tinyHouse, #offGrid, #DIY, #howTo, #frugal, #free, #nature, #natural, #van, #vanLife, #construction, #landscaping, #livinmicro, #bench, #driveway, #rebar, #remesh, #solarPanel, #party