Patio Palooza IV

And it would seem Rome nor patios can be built in a day, or in this case, a weekend. I will say we came pretty close, and that were it not for 100% of our workforce (me) becoming ill we could have finished. I was able to make it this far:

With a few more hours of cutting, filling in joint sand and tamping, the patio will be complete. All that will be left is to landscape this whole thing. It's starting to heat up outside, the deck and patio are looking good and I can see that first beer at the end of the tunnel.

Patio Palooza III

As Alexson left for Mexico (probably headed for a chair on a patio), my brother, a friend and I got to work on the patio. The first thing that had to be done was to compact the gravel with a plate compactor. If I were to develop a difficulty scale of all the tools we've rented from Home Depot with the 2-man auger being a 10 and the cement mixer being a 1, the compactor would be a 2. While it was pretty heavy to lift in and out of the car, it was as easy to operate as a lawn mower.

After a quick comment by my friend the pharmacist that the patio looked like a thyroid gland (I'm not quite sure it would do too well as Iowa doesn't have the highest concentration of iodine in the soil), we started on the edging. Other than having to deal with some gigantic nails, the edging went down quick and painless.

After laying down the sand with the help of some 1" guides we were able to get started on the pavers

We all took a minute to review the herringbone patter and were off to haul bricks. The middle part of the patio was fairly straight-forward, but the edging was a little more tricky. I found it was better to take off small slices off the bricks to form a gradual curve than to curve suddenly with only a few bricks. Good progress for Saturday.

Patio Palooza: How do I cut these things?

As the paver project was approaching, I took it upon myself to do a little research on how we were going to get all the bricks cut. There were a few options that we had: rent a masonry saw (~90/day), rent a manual breaker (~35/day) or buy a masonry blade (~80) and hope the miter saw can handle it. Being the pioneering spirits that we are, we went with the diamond-tipped saw blade. Renting the masonry saw could get pricey and the breaker wouldn't have left clean edges. It appears that we chose wisely. The saw had no problem cutting through the pavers. The downside (I'm not sure this could have been avoided unless someone rents a wet saw) is that everything gets covered in a blanket of concrete dust. Wear a mask. You will have to shampoo your hair 3 times and will look similar to this when done for the day.

Patio Palooza II

Patio Palooza is in full gear. Friday kicked it off with 1 guy digging in a skid loader, 3 deliveries and 2 people hauling gravel like they were in some 1930's chain-gang. Digging was the easiest part because it is the one thing we had contracted out. Digging a 14' x 16' x 8" patio didn't sound like a fun time to us, and renting a skid loader would have cost as much as hiring someone. Not to mention that neither of us has ever used one (we would probably have to post, Deck Part 2: rebuilding the deck because it was hit by a skid loader).

After we recieved a delivery of sand, gravel, pavers and supplies

we were able to start hauling in the gravel. We set up a few stakes with a mason line 4 inches above the ground to act a s a guide in loading it all.



As we were cleaning up we even found this:

The patio is off to a good start.