SpokaneFixer

A few years ago, we had siding installed on the home. As part of that large project, we decided to have seamless gutters installed immediately afterward. All of the downspouts made sense except for on the front entry. There was no good place to put a downspout, so the gutter contractor recommended a rain chain. I’d never even heard of such a thing, but my wife was all over it. She chose a chain, and for the next couple of years, we had this seemingly random chain hanging off of our entry. It looked nice enough, but it always seemed a bit awkward just hanging there and falling into the yard.

For the last couple of years, we dreamed of pouring a small patch of cement below the chain for placing a rain barrel. I’d never poured cement, and while I knew it wasn’t terribly difficult, other projects took priority and we just didn’t get to it.

Enter my parents. They were visiting from Houston in June, and my wife had mentioned that I should try to find a project for my dad to help me complete while he was here. I didn’t really want to ask him to help with anything, mostly because the last time my parents came to Washington, I may have suckered my dad into helping me trim a few tree branches… which may have turned into trimming all of my trees… which may have led to five truckloads of brush that we had to haul to the dump… which may have garnered much well deserved (goodnatured) complaining from my dad. So… you can understand my hesitation in asking him to help me with a project during this visit.

However, as we sat on the deck shooting the breeze, I asked about pouring cement. Dad had just poured cement to put up a flag pole at their lakehouse and was telling me how easy it was. So, next thing I know, we’re at Lowe’s grabbing five bags of Quikrete. By day’s end, I had my cement patch and had found a wine barrel on facebook marketplace. Dad and I went and picked up the barrel, and before we knew it, we were well on our way into our project. We also found a beautiful, red well pump at North 40 and picked that up as well.

After my parents went back to Texas, I sanded the barrel, installed valves, and applied two coats of stain and three coats of polyurethane. We used a normal hose bibb at the bottom so we can connect a hose and water the plants. Near the top, we installed an overflow connected to a soaker hose leading into the front landscaping, so when the barrel gets full the water can exit gracefully. On top, we installed the well pump for pumping water into buckets (the kids especially love this feature). On the backside of the barrel’s top, we led the rain chain down to the barrel. We installed a grating over the hole leading into the barrel and covered it with small rocks to help keep out debris.

This was one of our favorite projects to work on. It turned out so well that Mom bought two wine barrels upon her return to Houston, and Dad ordered the same pump from North 40. We love the final product in both form and function, as it’s far better than either of us could have imagined. I guess you could say that we worked our first miracle that time we turned wine into water.

Pouring the Cement

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The Wine Barrel

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Turning Wine into Water

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Before and After

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