Yard Working in Winter..... fun stuffs

Well I hope everyone’s holidays went well! Mine were enjoyable and busy. I don’t think I need to mention busy at this point. You realize it right? I am finally back with blog writing attempt number nine million seven hundred and thirty four thousand sixty one and three quarters.  The big project I want to brag on right now is the patio! Holy crap. It is so awesome it is overshadowing the fact that the yard looks great.

This is the before.

Here is what we did:

Note the huge rock.

Rototilled the whole yard.. in the dark. Give a guy a tool and he can’t wait to use it and insists on using it after normal, meaning women, people go in the house to eat dinner and sleep and those types of things. We made the yard flat by hauling mounds of dirt to low points and doing a lot of raking. We continue to rake since the previous renters appeared to throw trash where ever they wanted and it is growing up out of the ground like strange daisies. We also tilled up 8 paving stones that we used in our firepit. I'm sure the clunks, ka-changs, and freakishly loud scrapes of metal on rock went unnoticed by the neighbors.

Oh before I forget this monumental tidbit. We moved a huge flippin’ heavy rock across the yard to make a seat for our fire pit. I felt like I had done an iron man workout for a week after.

Then we rock outlined the raised back garden area (that is still lumpy and decomposing) and…Planted grass! The rocks were sort of strewn about the yard. We plan on continuing the line along the fence in a sort of raised (6-10") flowerbed type thing. Hopefully this deters the midget nazi dog to stop trying to infiltrate our yard. And it might deter our angel pups from assisting. Austin then chased the birds away from his precious grass seed for a week or three.. This proved entertaining.. Also it is like Christmas morning every day when he looks out at the new little grass sprouts.. What is with guys and grass? 

  

We then pulled up all the bricks of the old patio which turned into a muddy task. There were so many bricks buried that went unseen until we started.. not to mention the moss, which I like the look of but tends to make cold and wet more miserable when mucking about. We then dug down and laid a level pea gravel foundation. 

The gravel ended up being free since we went to a rock place and they suggested taking off the canopy of my truck for easy loading by their loader tractor guys. But when we returned a few days later all the tractor operators were gone. The poor rock place lady lent us a shovel and said take whatever you want. Free is free. So even flats and slacks become digging with a shovel clothes on those days.

 

After putting a layer of sand and leveling we, meaning I, chose a brick pattern.We didn't really have much option when it came to the pattern. What we tore up was a hodge-podge unplanned mess and it turns out the bricks are all an odd size. 

 

At first thought I assumed that a single brick lengthwise is the same as two bricks edge wise. Meaning put to short ends to one long side and wa-la. But that was not the case. I chose the zig-zag pattern because it seems to be the most workable and the gaps least noticeable.

This part took a little while since through this whole thing Austin struggled with a kinked back and I’m just plain lazy. Austin edged the patio's exposed edges with wood and leveled the dirt around it. The last step was chinking with more sand.. still need to do a few more things like wait for it not to be frozen so we can chink some more and do more power washing (Austin did that right before we chinked the first time).

Overall I’m happy with the outcome. Not so hard and only the cost of sand and grass seed since we reused the bricks, borrowed the tiller and got free gravel. It was all done in between work and playtime. Only a few weeks start to finish. Maybe 36 hours inexperienced labor?

 

The End

 Thank you so much for staying with me so far. And I would like to give a little love to Awesome Austin for the hard work involved in all the making-this-place-feel-like-home.. and for giving up his ugly unique blue college kid sofa. That story comes next.

 Before

 After