Recent rains combined with the fact that my almost-wife’s family (mom, dad, 3 sisters, 2 brother-in-laws, 5 nieces and nephews, and one sister’s boyfriend) will be staying with us this weekend meant it was time to finally mow the lawn and tidy it all up.
Now, mowing the lawn isn’t blog worthy news. But I did come up with a solution to the ugliest situation in our yard.
We’ve had a dog kennel that’s gone totally unused in our yard for over a year now. We bought it, learned that the dog could escape from it while I’m out at work, and just stopped using it. Partly because I was reluctant to put the dog in a sitaution that he could escape from, but mostly because I was working from home shortly after that.
Well, I’m outside mowing the lawn and this thing just bugs me. So, standing there next to a riding lawn mower and a dog kennel that needs to be moved I get an idea: Tie a rope between to the two and just yank it across the yard. Maybe put some cardboard under the posts so I don’t dig any trenches.
My inner hillbilly is pleased with this solution.
Alas, didn’t work. The tractor doesn’t have enough traction or oomph to pull this one off.
My inner physics nerd pipes up at this time and explains to everybody else inside my head that we need to reduce the fiction coefficient so that the tractor has enough power to pull the contraption across the ground. The inner hillbilly, probably drawing from the short period of my life where I lived in a trailer, pipes up, “Yah mean put some wheels on this thing? Yee haw!”
Off to the hardware store where I explain to a floor worker that I need a wheel on a stick. The kennel is constructed from tubular steel and if I had a wheels on a sticks I could jam it up in there and roll the thing around the yard. He shows me where the outdoor wheels are, like the kind you’d see on a push lawn mower, and shows me where the steel parts are that I’d need to fabricate something to make my wheel on a stick. Around the time that I’m finally coming up with a highly ambitious plan that’s going to involve me buying more tools than this simple job really justifies, along with scads of steel parts, I spot the bins with a bunch of rolling casters in them.
Sure, they aren’t suited for outdoor use, but it’s a wheel on a stick, and the big ‘uns are 3″ around. This’ll do. I grab four of them.
The inner Dutchman in me pipes up, “You could do it with three!” and I toss one back in the bins.
Now, the pipes are about 1″ in diameter and the bolt coming off the top of these casters is 0.5″ around. That’s a lot of slop says my inner engineer. So, I grab 3 nuts that’ll bring the circumference of the thing to 0.75″ once applied for the low price of 37 cents each.
Drive home, install the casters, and viola! I’m pulling a 10′x10′ kennel all over the yard with my tractor. I eventually ditch the tractor because now I can slide the thing around under my own power and stick it on our patio. I mow the overgrown area and get to thinking: Ya know, now that I got this thing semi elevated it’d be real easy to finally tie the chain link right to the frame in scads of spots and make this thing functional.
Off to Meijer (it’s like a WalMart) to buy a bunch of zip ties.
Drive back home, lash the thing together, drop the wheels, and throw the dog in it with his dinner.
Seems to keep him in there just fine now.
Reinstall wheels, move to new area the the back yard and remove my wonderful new wheels.
I like this. I can finally move the thing around without any hassle, which is really nice, because I’m sure Theresa is going to tell me to move it again Sunday morning!
