Paver Lay complete

I rented a paver saw from Home Depot yesterday and managed to finish the final lay of pavers just before it got dark (It was too dark to take a picture, I'll post one later). It's supposed to be rainy again today and early tomorrow, so I may not be able to lay down the sand until later Saturday afternoon.

I'd like to start the cleanup on Sunday. I just need to find a truck to rent!

There are a couple other minor things to do like backfilling and leveling the yard around the patio, re-seeding the dug-up areas.

Lastly, I'll probably use the extra pavers to replace the rear landing on the front porch. That's really just an afternoon of work, it's so small.

Still a lot to do, but once the sand is down, I can relax at the end of the day on my new patio! :D

Patio Project - Rough paver lay finished.

Well, I finally finished the rough lay of the paver stones. Now I have to rent a cutter and put in the odd tiles. I had a mix of good fortune and bad with the project today.

First, the good. A co-worker suggested I get a rotary or impact hammer to chisel off that 1/2" of concrete at the base of the stairs. So I rented one from Home Depot after work today. Voila! I had the area ground down and the pavers in front of the stairs all fit within an hour.

The tough spots were 1) getting the drain spout cut down for the pavers to go over it. This took a little doing , but I got it done in about 15 minutes. Dremel rules! 2) The last row, the back row is about 1/8" too short, so I'm going to have to cut the pavers for the whole back row. C'est la vie!

It's going to rain tomorrow, Wednesday will be dry, but Thursday is still unknown. If it's going to be dry Thursday I'll rent a paver cutter Wednesday after work and get down to the business of shoring up the last of the construction...

Then it's just clean up!

Patio Construction - Laying Stones Day 4

I got a couple of hours of work in today. May helped out again with chiselling away the 1/2" of concrete needed to get the full stone in next to the stairs. Unfortunately, it started to rain after only a couple hours of work. Bugger! I had hoped to be through the rough lay today. Tomorrow will be dry, but then it's going to rain for several days...Drat. I hate delays.

Building the Patio - Laying Stones Day 3

I didn't put any work into the patio today as I went to the Seattle 100 Charity event. More on that later when I get some photos back.



Yesterday I spent a few hours working on the patio, and with May's help made good progress. I was so happy that May wanted to help. She ended up with a fairly arduous job. It turns out that the stones are off by about 1/2" to the edge of the stairs. Instead of trying to cut the stones that amount, I'm just chipping the concrete at the stair lip back 1/2". May did a great job, but it's slow going and pretty demanding on the upper arms.



I focused on laying moving and laying down stones. I think there's a couple days work left doing that.









Once the stones are down I will rent a masonry saw to cut the odd size stones I need in a few places. From there it's just a matter of putting in the sealing sand and tamping it down. Then I can finally enjoy the fruits of my labor. Of course there will be more to do, for the clean-up, but that I can take at a slower pace.

Patio Project - Laying Pavers Day 2

Uff. A lot of work. I got in about 3 hours of work tonight and made good progress. I wanted to keep working, but I bonked and needed to take a break. I'm not going to get much done the next few days because I have the Seattle 100 charity event on Saturday (http://www.seattle100.org/) and need to prep the bike for that tomorrow. So I will probably only have an hour or so between now and Sunday.



But as it looks now, I should be finished by the end of next week, as long as the weather holds (fingers crossed, knock on wood).

The first pavers are laid!

Woo-Hoo! I put down the first stone yesterday!





















Today I only got about 1-1/2 hours of work in...This is going to take a while. I had a little trouble with some of the pavers lining up properly, but I seem to have solved that problem. There are a few areas where there might be some issues, but I'll be dealing with those as they arise. So far so good! :D

Patio Project Laying the Base Material

I was out in the back yard working on polishing off the gutter drain and dry well side-project when I heard the phone ring. By the time I got there I missed the call but there was a message from Victor.



"Hey I don't have anything to do and I don't want to be inside on such a nice day, so I thought I would offer you my services for manual labor on your project if you need it..."



Are you kidding me? Of course I could use the help! Poor Victor had no idea what he was in for. But thanks to him we managed to complete laying down the base layer in just 1 day! It would have taken me at least two days without him.



Up next is compacting the base material and then laying the pavers! It feels like there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Patio Project - Final Preparations for the Base

Friday. A momentous day! The base material (1/4-minus) and pavers were delivered.

I put down the weed barrier and laid down the relocated gutter drain. Saturday will involve laying down the base material.

I left the last bit of the drain open tonight because I want to try to find a drain cover and then have to dig out a bit of a drywell for the drainage. I'll do that first thing tomorrow as well.

It is starting to feel like I'm coming down the final stretch.

Patio Project - Smooth and Level

Phew! It took four days, about 12 hours of labor in total to get the base level. But at last! She is zee done!


Tomorrow I'll lay down the landscape fabric to keep the weeds away a little bit longer. After that, I'll have my base materials and pavers and will start the installation!


I haven't published anything new in the last few days because the changes from day-to-day are not exactly obvious. But here is the finished base.

Layta!

Keeping my feet on level-ish ground

As I sit on my front porch this evening, freshly showered and surrounded by neglected yardwork (mow the lawn, cut back dead flowers, weed, fertilize, and on and on) and as a sip of wine (Horizon's Edge Bone Dry Gewurtztraminer) washes down the last layer of dust coating my mouth. I notice for the first time that it was a perfect day in Seattle. Not a cloud in the sky, perfect temperature (about 80 or so).

In other words, this patio project has been all consuming for the last few weeks.

Therefore, tomorrow will be a day of rest. I will go celebrate the holy festival of the Sunday Ride at the church of The Great Twisties where I will practice the ritual of Scraping a Knee. After which we will gather in Paul's woodland retreat to observe the holy saints of MotoGP demonstrate miracles at the Sachsenring Cathedral and partake of the feast of St. BBQ. Twisted be the throttle, Amen.

Ok...apparently I'm a bit punchy, too.

Now for the progress report: After completing the gross excavation yesterday (which is more like Bush's "Mission Accomplished" statement than I care to admit), I went down to Pavingstone Supply in Ballard to order my base material and pavers. It cost about what I expected, which is to say: It t'weren't cheap. Still a major milestone in the project.

Luckily, they won't be delivered until Friday, which is probably how long it will take me to level the damn thing. Today was actually very frustrating. I was trying to lay out the level surface using stakes, string and a line level. To my utter @#$%-ing dismay, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make it line up. I would make a level line from end of the patio to the other in 6' to 8' sections and continue on to make a square. Each section was leveled, but by the time I returned to the starting point, I'd be 2" or 3" off! BAH!

Eventually, I decided to take a more sectional approach. By using an 8'-long 2"x4" and my 4' carpenter's level I can get a good sense of how level any given 8'x8' section of the patio is. I've also put a 1/2" bump on the board so I can be sure the patio slopes away from the house. (1/2" per 4' distance).

The one thing I've discovered is that I've over-excavated a bit. So after digging up a chunk of the yard, I find myself putting it back! No worries, with 6 cubic yards of topsoil around, I'm actually pretty happy to put some of it back!

That said, it still took me about 3 hours to level about 1/3 of the area, so I figure it will take me the rest of the week to get everything squared away (no pun intended...really). Just in time to start moving the 1/4-minus and paving stones!

Right now it looks like I will finish a little bit after the end of July since I have a couple major events that will consume the next couple Saturdays, which will put me behind schedule a bit. If this wonderful weather holds, it won't be a problem, so keep your fingers crossed.

Patio Project - Excavation Day 5 - LEMONY FRESH VICTORY IS MIIIINE!!!!

FINISHED! Well, finished with the major digging at least. Now I've got to level the surface, order the 1/4-minus, pavers, and joint sand...Lay 'em all down and I'm good to go!

Patio Project - Excavation Day 4

Yay! I'm past the 50% mark! I'm actually well past it. I'm over to the side of the project where I have less earth to remove, so I'm hopeful it will go fast from here.

May is doing her best impression of a Japanese schoolgirl doing the peace sign. Wakea is doing his best impression of...er...a fluffy white dog-like thing.

Patio Excavation Day 3

I made good progress today. I wasn't able to do any work yesterday as May and I had a performance to see at Benaroya Hall downtown. I should be past the 50% point tomorrow! Man, this would have been so much easier with a small excavator. But that just wasn't an option.

Summer Project - Build a patio

I have been shamed. My wee younger brother, who is about to become a father for the first time has pointed out that I have not updated my blog in more than 6 months. Shame on me. But what to write about? What's going on that's worth writing about? Well, there is the patio project which involes digging up a couple cubic yards of concrete, a few more of sod, and then about 6 of topsoil. That will do!

My old patio was sick and ailing. A solid slab of conrete about 10'x10' that had split into three sections. It was too small for entertaining and and was in need of work. I started plotting this out last year, but the logistics seemed daunting to manage on my own. By the time I squared it all away it was too late. So I started in June of '08 so that I can finish it by the end of the summer. Ultimately, it will cover nearly 350 sq. ft. and be suitable for entertaining, grilling and sunning comfortably. The plan was to have it done by the end of July...Okay, that was optimistic, but I'm still hopeful I get to use it at least once before the end of the sunny season (which has arrived a month late this year, I hope it doesn't end a month early!).

The plan is to install a patio of pavers. simple gray squares in an offset pattern. But since my house is on a rise, the challenge comes from moving the tons and tons (literally) of gravel, sand and pavers from the street level up to the back yard. It simply isn't practical to have the gravel sand and pavers put on the house level. Ugh. I'm going to have a very strong back or a very hurt back by the end of this summer!


The easy part was smashing the old concrete. I bought I nice 10 lb. hammer and casually tore the old patio to pieces in less than 3 hours over 3 days. Then came pulling up the sod. That too, was fairly simple. I just used a flat shovel to cut the sod into sections and pile it up on the side of the house.

But the excavating. Man. That is hard, hard work. I started yesterday and made disappointing progress. But today I bought a pick-axe that has been the best purchase of this project so far! Today in about 1 hour I was able to move more than double the earth I moved yesterday.

Groovy. Back on track and back on schedule.







I hope to be done with the excavation by the end of this week (ever the optimist). It will take me another day or two to level and tamp the ground, then I'll have the 1/4-minus delivered and the sand. That will take another week to move, level and tamp down. Then the simple matter of installing the pavers! No problem...Yuh.

I'll be keeping you posted!