I drove through a small town last week where they had these really cool lamp posts down each side of their main street. They had hanging baskets of flowers on each side. The flowers sort of filled in and looked like a solid band of color around the post. So I want to make something similar. A post, painted, with baskets and maybe a solar light , (those tacky ones you see lining a drive way ). Small and round that would sit right in the top of the pipe. Does this sound do-able? How is the best way to anchor the post ? Concrete ? I ran this by my husband and got those rolling eyeballs we all love to see. But I really think I can do this by myself. Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated.

I bought some copper torches at Lowes at few years ago. They still look nice, and stay out year round. I keep oil in mine (always) to keep condensation from rusting out the inside. (I had that happen with some vintage torches I used to own, so my lesson was learned.) Here's a tip for whatever you find: Go to the hardware store and get some copper plumbing caps, the kind you cap the ends of your pipe with. I have those on all of mine; it keeps water from rain out of the torches. They are also handy for snuffing out the flames when it's time to put them out. I just put the cap off to the side of the wick at the top of the torch, and they live there just fine while your torch is in use.

Thanks for all the compliments... cdavmd: Paver brand is Flagstone Pavers. White based concrete, in cream/beige/charcoal. We used Orlando Brick Pavers in Orlanfo, FL. We went with American Pavers coping since their cream color looked nicer than the Flagstone Paver light color (I forget the color name). lmhall2000: I believe the wattage of the IntelliBrites is 75W... that is what I recall seeing on the box. The datasheet on the Pentair site states "IntelliBrite pool lights need only 37 watts to create the same light output as traditional incandescent and halogen pool lights do at 161 wattsmore than 75% less!" So a 75W LED (when displaying white light) is equivilent to a 300W bulb. Colors are less brite. We were originally going to put a spa LED on the shallow end, but received advice to put a full size pool light instead. Glad we did. But to make a full size light fit, we had to have a minimum of 3'-3" depth... PB did the extra depth for free (3' was standard). The first 8' of the shallow end is pretty level because of the stairs are 8'. At the deep end, the floor is essentially level for about 10' out from spa wall. The pool is 40', so subtracting the 8' and 10', the floor drops from 3'-3" to 7' over a span of 22'. If you look at my Progess Pics (see link above), you can get a feel for the slope. The slope feels pronounced for me, but I don't mind it. We would have gone with 3'-6" but did not want to pay the extra costs... the deeper you go at the shallow end, the more steps you need... and that is the extra cost. I personally think 4' is too deep at the shallow end if you have small kids. As for cost, if I subtract off the heat pump and spa, then our cost was approx. $37K. Fence was $5K on top of that. That's Orlando pricing. Concrete coping ran about $15 per LF, and pavers ran about $4.50 to $5.00 per SF. Total cost of my pavers/coping was approx. $8300. However, the price of stamped concrete ranged from $9.50 to $15 per SF. terrier96: Technically, the deep end is 7'3", but I say 7'. Our last pool was 5' deep (very common in FL with the high water table). Most PBs include a standard depth of 5'. The additional cost to go from 5' to 7' was $700. But the cost to go from 5' to 8' was $1500. We were just not willing to pay extra for 8' because we thought we did not need it. The 7'3" is deep enough for shallow diving... I can dive in across the width of the pool. We don't dive, and did not want a pool deep enough for proper diving (most residentail pools built with diving boards are not safe enough for diving anyway). We did want a pool long enough for laps, and 40' is good for us. One reason we went with a 20 x 40 was cost. In FL, folks can build a basic 400 SF pool (no coping and no decking) for X dollars, or build an 800 SF pool for 20% to 25% more. We had the room, so spending an extra 20% to 25% to double the pool area was an easy decision. We had 5 folks in the pool on the 4th, with rafts... all in the shallow end and we were not cramped. -Gorilla

Morning Beth, Love the bathroom wall! Super cool! Just very cool and super interesting.(Japanese garden seat is an interesting twist) Next time we have a bathroom to redo you're getting the call for the design! Here's an outdoor shower that one of our customer's built using 5/4x6 FSC Cumaru Shorts and last photo is a door we built using genuine Burmese Teak. It's a lovely wood and I if I remember correctly we were around $24 bd/ft for 8/4. Teak can be very expensive depending on the sizes you're using and the old adage of "measure twice cut once" could be upped to 3/1 because mistakes are costly. Yes, as you well know, these woods are super hard, but don't require any special saws to cut them. Carbide tipped blades and a little bit of patience and it will go right through. It does not cut super quick and easy like a piece of PT. Morning Tony! Welcome to the conversation and so glad your happy with your PT deck. It looks fantastic! There are few lovelier places to be than outdoors in your neck of the woods during the summer (Go Badgers!) Few points of note. Hardwoods require no more nor less maintenance than PT. Period. The choice is one about usable lifespan, pricing, aesthetics, and the environment. Beth oils it because she chooses to oil it not because she has to. The "maintenance" is an aesthetic choice and that's all. We've known individuals in Wisconsin and Chicago and Buffalo who go years without oiling their Hardwood decks and the color doesn't fade. (We're sure we already posted it here in this thread, but just in case we didn't, to see how easy it is to Oil a deck go to our video gallery and watch our "How To Oil" video https://www.soluslumber.com/gallery-how-to-videos/ )The main factor is the amount of sunlight it is exposed to as opposed to snow and rain and cold. If you place your respective woods next to each other and wait 25 years one will still look great and the the other will need to be replaced. Ipe was used on the Coney Island boardwalk and was down for roughly 75 years untreated before it was replaced. Contractor who won the bid kept the reclaimed material, surface planed it, and resold it. We personally have a boardwalk in Massachusetts using 2x6 PT boards, it is 20 years old, hasn't been oiled with any preservative, had to flip the boards because they got too bad to walk on and now the second side is done and desperately needs to be replaced as their useful life is over. Our porches are 1x4 Cedar left totally untreated and they're still doing great. Composite ( there are so many different kinds that now fall under that heading but too early in a Monday morning to open the can of worms on that discussion), but agree they do get hot to walk on and you raised a great point about the sagging. With composite we do not EVER receimmend a 24" OC center joist span for this very reason. 16"OC is the absolute minimum we recommend independent of what a manufacturer may say and we're not opposed to 12" OC depending on board size and what you plan to put in top of it. Very smart move on the stainless steel screws (304-305ss will do the trick) Joist tape is never a bad idea. It will help protect your joist from water sitting in them and rotting the wood. Some water will still get in around the screws and that's where the problems will start, but the tape will definitely help mitigate that.