Why I Oughta...

Just a few days ago, I posted some inspiration and details of a DIY Alpine trough project that I found on Instagram where someone used a *real* stone trough as a water feature ( wasserspiel ).  I talked about buying a styrofoam cooler to use as the chassis and building out the 'stone look' with concrete.   As luck would have it, I came across a free (to me) styrofoam cooler this past week.  It is small.  At least....smaller than I want for a wasserspiel or...ahem.... Alpine stone trough.   But, for a prototype?  I think it will work perfectly.   The outside dimensions of the prototype are 15" long x 11" wide x 9" deep.   It has 1" thick walls.   Based on what I picked up from watching various YouTube shorts, Instagram reels and reddit posts, there are a number of ways to go about DIY'ing your own stone trough.  You can apply burlap and concrete.  You can apply something like an acrylic fortifier to try to g...

This photo above - of part of our driveway - is a few weeks old, but I wanted to drop this down here on the blog, so I could refer back to it in terms of house maintenance.  When we built the house, the concrete guys laid down a nice thick concrete sealer on top of our brand new driveway.  I subsequently worked earlier this Summer to powerwash the whole thing and put on a first coat of sealer.  That meant that it was about two years old before I put on a second coat. Then, late in October, I found a day that was 'right' in terms of temperature (air temps in the 50's and rising for a few hours, surface temps in the 50's and no rain in the forecast).  So, I quickly grabbed the garden sprayer, filled it with sealer and slopped it on.  I used this SealBest Concrete Sealer from Menards (not the high gloss stuff) that retails for $79.99 for five gallons .  You can see it in varying degrees of absorption with a purple/white-ish hue.  And, as I mentioned ...