A devilish imp on one shoulder and a beautiful angel in the other. Why is it that the imp wins soooo many times?
@Nancy Hart You need not fear for what they may see, as we have 6-foot high rock walls encircling the pool area: The patio is between the back wall (foreground), and the front wall.
Take care of yourself, Frank. You'll be fine. We should never depend too much on anyone in this world. Stay positive.
@Thomas Stearn Oh, gosh no! My wife helped set rock, too! We enjoy being creative together, the more unusual the result, the more rewarding it is! Here she is helping with another rock-building project: my shop building in Missouri. Below, I'm standing in the trench we dug for the front wall foundation. All of the walkway and patio area concrete we mixed and poured ourselves. About 800 square feet in all.....that's about 30,000 lbs, wet. A bit of much-earlier rockwork, the living room of our house in Las Vegas, 1974. The fireplace is a "see-through" to the kitchen, as well as the wood bin accessible from either side. Not my wife pictured. It was Christmastime. The rock was all colorful sandstone we gathered from the desert area around Red Rocks, which has since been made a State Park.
It's admirable that you have a wife who can lend you a hand with carpentry and masonry but even then I'd still regard it as a DIY-job, which is amazing. Looks like an awful lot of work to me but it can be awarding as you say. You and your wife seem to be a good match acting in concert and being very determined and task-oriented. I'm sure you know how lucky you are to have her.
@Thomas Stearn Most all of my "talents" for building things, some unimaginably complicated, stem from economic fact: self-taught welder, machinist, plumber, bricklayer, etc., because I could never hope to have the dough to pay someone to do it, AND, the reward to oneself of being able to say, "Look, I built that". Some observers are picayunish toward it: the mailman in Vegas, observing my rock-setting daily, predicted dourly that it would all fall apart. I was wasting my time. Passing through Vegas years later, I went to see the old place. Not a single crack nor rock out of place was evident. Of course not, because I built it. No cut corners, no weak mortar, no skimping on reinforcement iron. Plus, as good an Engineering design as I was capable of using. Frank
You did good, @Frank Sanoica . You are right, there is an immense satisfaction in doing something and looking at it and saying, "Look at that! I did it!" Doesn't matter if it's as big as a rock wall or as small as painting. Or growing a tomato plant with seven tomatoes on one stem.