Monday, March 10, 2014

12 Steps to Building a Dance Floor

1. Find friends who love to dance.

The most important step in building a dance floor in your backyard is this: have a good reason to build a dance floor in your backyard. They take quite a bit of prep work and they don't come cheap.

Our reason is obvious. We are friends with lots of Moldovans. They love to dance. They need to dance. They dance in big circles. They need room to dance.
2. Find a nice big area in your yard.






The next important thing is having enough room. We got that covered. Our yard is big. Too big. We don't want to water all the grass. We especially don't want to mow all the grass. There is no better way to kill an expanse of grass than to kill it good with 16 yards of concrete.







3. Rent a roto-tiller and go at it.

4. Put the dog inside.
5. Pick up coffee and bagels from Panera Bread.
6. Invite your friends to come help.
7. Place border and add wire. Wait for two concrete trucks.



Set a day for the pour. If you time it right, you'll get a gorgeous spring day with no rain, no wind, no hot sun and no muddy ground. If you time it perfectly, it will be right in the middle of some big rain dumps in a drought year so the ground is moist but not too wet.

8. Get your dog's paw print.
9. Get your friends' hand prints.
10. Get your own prints.
11. Get your little friend's footprints.

12. Let it dry and learn some new dance moves.
Thanks to our friend Adrian's expertise and lots of heave-ho work from some great friends, we'll soon be Dancing Under the Stars on our new Moldovan dance floor. We plan to put some fruit trees around it like a proper Eastern European garden. Grass? Mowing? Watering? We'd rather cut the rug than the lawn.