Homemade Clothesline 2.0

We put up a clothesline back in early to mid May.

The posts were only put down a foot deep, which we kind of figured would be an issue for the really heavy, wet stuff. The clothes were a sagging, the posts were a leaning, and the concrete was coming out of the ground. The Big Man’s solution? Use wire for backward tension.

First step, we got four of these earth anchors. I can’t remember if we got the 30” or 40”, but they were plenty long in my opinion.

image source

We also picked up some coated braided cable and more wire clips.

We were good to go! Shouldn’t take too long to put some anchors in the ground and wrap posts with some cables, right? HA!

We had to screw those long anchors all the way down into the clay ground. Thank goodness it was still wet from a rain, or we would never have gotten them in!

Oh man, if only you could have seen the sight of a show we were putting on to get those suckers down! But you can’t, because I didn’t take pictures. Some things are too embarrassing to share! So I'll do my best to illustrate.

We slid this broom through the eye and used it as a lever. The Big Man, being bigger and heavier than myself, grabbed both ends of the broom and put all his weight down on the anchor. Then, I used the broom to spin him around. The Big Man gets dizzy easily, so we had to take a break often.

As the anchor got lower and lower into the ground, the Big Man was on his own. Picture slow motion break dancing! Oh what a fun time!
Fun fact: As I looked up pictures for the anchor, I saw that they only screwed them down a few inches or so. So that’s how it’s supposed to work! Oh well. The Big Man wanted to make sure these babies held down fast, and make no mistake, they are stuck in there for good!

After those shenanigans were over, we had two anchors and a post in triangle formation. Just loop the wire through, wrap around the post, and fasten. Once the other post was done, we made sure everything was pulled taut. All done! No more sagging clothes!

Have you ever gotten creative in fixing a former project?

Steem on! Upvote, comment, and follow :)

Join Us On Discord. https://discord.gg/hPJs5Rb