johnreilly

patio in progress

Patio-making is a process. We’ve spent the past several days working on it, and though I’m tired as hell, it’s starting to look pretty dang good.

I’ve been keeping up with the photos on Flickr, so you can follow the progress there, but I’ll just call out a few highlights here.

We started with 3 cubic yards of class 5 rock:

Turns out this wasn’t enough. We wound up having two more yards delivered. Then got another half yard. Maybe we don’t measure depth so well. In the end, we moved 7 tons of rock over the weekend. With a yellow wheelbarrow. Which broke.

After each layer of rock was put down (about 2 inches or so), it had to be tamped down with a plate compactor which did an amazing job of rattling every piece of dish ware in our kitchen.

We learned that Katy is much better at this than me. That’s okay, I have no pride. It gives me a chance to sit down.

This is serious business. There may have been a casualty here or there.

Once we got tired of moving rock around, we attached some plastic edging to the ground with big ol’ 10 inch metal stakes. The edging (hopefully) keeps the forthcoming sand and bricks nice and tight.

Next, sand. The white PVC pipes are guides which keeps the sand at a uniform depth as we spread it around.

After sand, comes bricks. Lots of bricks. This is where I become an old man and start complaining about my back.

As we reached the opposite corner, we realized our measuring wasn’t so great. After repositioning the side edging about 3 times, we (err, I) finally decided that perfection wasn’t necessary and let the sand take care of the small gap. Thankfully, Katy is able to remain cheerful despite my crabbery. :-)

And, here’s what we had as of last night:

(Note the shiny new red wheelbarrow.) Tonight, we’ll be picking up 100 more pavers and maybe laying more sand & bricks. Either that or we’ll sit in the grass drinking beer.

The end is in sight. I’m spec’ing grills.

first layer of rock done

Day one of the patio comes to a close. Witness Katy cleaning up one of the edges of the excavation, and the ceremonial first pile of rock dumped in the hole. 

A short while later, we’ve got our first layer of rock down:

More pictures of the process (from last year) can be found in part 1. Follow our progress this year in part 2.

Tomorrow: we get the plate compactor, and we do our damnedest to finish the rock base. We’ll see…