Good morning, I went out yesterday and found the highest point of the lowest point of the ground (if that makes sense) and used my handy-dandy water level to find the equal point at the highest point of the cliff. Then measured down from the cliff. This determined that the water level will be 4.5 - 5 feet down from the edge of the current cliff. Then I picked a random number and measured up along the slope of my remaining hill 9 feet. I chose this number for three reasons a) it needed to be short enough not to eat up my entire hill, b) it needed to be long enough to make a substantial difference in the angle of the cliff/slope, and c) it needed to be big enough to fit three small pools. I'm not sure it will satisfy C, but it's a starting point. So then I did a little calculation. I'm not sure why I'm doing the calculation. But those 2 sides of the imaginary triangle leave me with a 10.3' slope up from the 4' mark. That would mean, if I built the lowest rock wall 2' high, it would have 1' submerged (approx) and 1' above water level. That seems much more doable. That also gave me a more accurate measurement of the "deep end". It is a good 4' down from the top of the water. That is more than ample. My first concern is STILL creating a stable berm for that area of the rock wall. My thoughts are to start work by cleaning up the shape of the pond and throwing all medium and small sized rocks into the deep end. Then, as I start to cut into the cliff to make the sloped terraced pools, I will throw the dirt onto the rocks and create a new floor of the pond. When I tried to pound a rod in the ground to measure the water level at the back of the pond, the gravel/dirt fell away as soon as I touched it. So I am anticipating that I cannot "sculpt" out a berm back there. So I'm wondering about using the big rocks (10" to 14" in diameter) to create a foundation (on top of this new floor) for the rock wall instead of a dirt berm. Does that make sense? Will write separate post regarding the pump. Cheers, Katie

Little late but here is a suggestion. You may be able to dig next to each leg/post pound a galvanized pipe in the bottom of each new hole and back fill with 6" of concrete. Then clamp or bolt each of your arbor posts to the new galvanized posts. This could be done so everything is underground and doesn't show. You now could adjust each leg to square it up. You could then use aluminum or stainless "L" shaped brackets to secure any other week connection joints. Dave

Not to rain on your parade, if you want to save yourself a lot of trouble down the road, be sure and plant your climbing rose on very strong support. I have been down the wimpy arbor path and it's not pretty. My mistake was to plant a New Dawn on either side of one of those put-it-together-and-stick-it-in-the-ground arbors. Within three years, it would have been a beautiful sight if I could have kept it upright. Rebar didn't make any difference when the winds got up. So this year, I cut the metal arbor out of my gigantic roses, and put up a substantial structure made of 6"x6"s buried 3' into the ground. Now I can look at the weather report without apprehension about forecasted winds.

Construction adhesive may hold, but it also may release over time due to moisture exposure at floor level. You might want to consider a high grade silicone adhesive, instead. Regardless of what you use, you'll still end up staining the grout (a consideration only if you ever intend to take the island away). I believe that granite counter installers routinely depend on silicone and the weight of the granite to keep countertops in place. If you try adhesive and it fails at some future point, then I would mount a hidden frame of 2X4's to the floor and attach the cabinets to that. I would do this by drilling through the tiles. A hammer drill and the right bit will make short work of it. Then you can fasten the frame down with the something like tapcon screws. You could even add some silicone adhesive: this glue and screw combo should be plenty strong. As for powder actuated nail drivers, they take some skill to use correctly and get the depth correct, and are very dangerous to use without safety training: they're basically guns that fire nails instead of bullets. I'd discourage this approach.