Pictures of building the seawall and the boathouse are in the image carousels. Descriptions are in the collapsible text. Mikey and Cathy did it all themselves except for a little help from their friends.
In 1999 Cathy and Mikey bought a lot on a lake. The next step was a seawall. Before they built the house, they checked with the pros and the cheapest bid was $4,000 for the 170 foot of lakefront. They got the materials for $1,700 and did it themselves. Mikey devised a way to do it with modular pieces 16' long. He built them on dry land using redwood and then dropped them in place. Cathy marked the posts with white rocks. Then they lifted the module out and Mikey dug the holes for the posts. After the holes were complete they dropped the module in and put 80 pounds of Quickcrete into each hole. It set up right in the water. Then they went on to the next module.
All went very good until all the modules were in place and they were waiting for the treated cap to be delivered. That night a beaver ate most of one of the redwood boards. Cathy remarked, "Gee, for the $32 that board cost we could have had a nice dinner instead of providing a beaver buffet." Actually they were glad that only one board had been munched. That night they covered the top of the wall with tinfoil on the theory that it doesn't feel good to the teeth...it worked and Mr. or Ms. Beaver didn't return. They put a tieback on every post and put on the cap of treated wood. The backfill was done by the builder when the house was constructed.
The Architectural Control Committee wanted to know who did the plans. "My wife." Mikey told them. They had never see anything like the isometric ink drawing on vellum as most plans were just crude sketches.
The Dock and the Boathouse were built after the house was completed in 2000. After talking to friends with boathouses it was determined that the one built the way they wanted would be at least $40,000. They did it themselves for about $5,000. Cathy drew up the plans after going around and looking at docks and boathouses built by the pros. That drafting experience at the Rock Island Arsenal paid off. The plans were approved by the Architectural Control Committee and work could begin. The dock could only extend into the lake 18' and anything in or near the water had to be redwood.
Mikey drove 4"x4" angle irons into the lake bottom and then Cathy held a furnace pipe in place while he filled it with Quickcrete. This wasn't all that easy as they were working in the water and at times Mikey was on a ladder doing the pounding and Cathy was holding the angle irons pulling toward herself with a rope and pushing away with a hammer to keep her hands out of harms way in case he missed. They had pre-drilled the holes for the beams so each angle iron had to be pounded in to the exact depth necessary which they determined using a homemade water level. The pros have a barge they work from, a machine that does the pounding, and a torch that cuts the angle irons off at the right level. The beams were attached and the floor joists and decking were applied.
No problems except Cathy was getting tired one day and stepped on the end of a board that wasn't nailed down. She fell through the deck and Mikey had to untangle her leg from the board and get her out. She was lucky to get only 5 huge bruises. She took one day off but the next day they worked Mikey did the same thing only he threw the circular saw in the lake. Cathy unplugged it and untangled him from the board...he didn't get any bruises...that wasn't fair. The saw was OK when it dried out.
Next the posts for the structure that was going to hold the hoist went up. The posts rested directly on the cement piers. After that the walls went up and were covered with OSB (oriented strand board). The door and window were installed (the height of the door was exactly right (quite by accident). Cathy and Mikey built the trusses in the workshop after drawing a pattern for them on the floor. Those were hauled down to the boat house and a friend helped put them up. The trusses were covered with OSB and during this process there was another accident. Mikey had built what he called "the trolley". It was an ingenious wooden platform that fit between the inner dock and the outer dock and provided a place to put a ladder when working on anything up high inside the boathouse. It also extended out past the door of the boathouse so that the gable end could be worked on. It worked great with one person on it. That particular day, Mikey and another friend were both out on the trolley and it gave way and they fell into the 42 degree water...yikes. They got out really fast and were uninjured. I knew it would happen but I had been "making suggestions" and had been told to more or less shut up so I didn't voice my concerns. Fortunately they had just completed the last piece of OSB when they fell in.
Next was the roofing which yet another friend helped accomplish. While that was going on the vinyl siding was also being applied. Cathy did most of it including the tricky cuts around the hexagon vents. They checked on a hoist and once again if they hired it done the cost was prohibitive. Mikey got one from a catalog and installed it himself for a fraction of the cost. The hoist worked great. The pros who install them seem to do it so the motor hangs out of the boathouse. They were careful not to let that happen because a garage door had been installed. The installers were really happy to use the trolly as that made it a while lot easker. The structure was strong and has withstood the wakes of many boats that always seem to pass too close going too fast. Later a copula with bass weather vein was built in the workshop and hauled up and attached with the help of the next door neighbor. The weather vein was purchased on line.
We sold the boat in December of 2016. The end of an era.