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Location: Longview, Washington, United States

I live in a small town in Washington State, USA, with my wife, two sons, two dogs, a cat, and family nearby. I work at the local community college as an I.T. Specialist. In March of '02, we bought a 70-some year old house that needed a lot of work. When I'm not working on the house, I like to throw pots, be outside, and read a lot.

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Monday, August 30, 2004

Patio Project Nears Completion


This is a follow on from the August 3rd posting. I filled in the declevity shown in that post with about 5 inches of 7/8ths inch round rock and then laid the brick and paving stone shown. Then I filled in the gaps with pea gravel. Between the new raised beds and the brick patio I am currently digging out a section that will become a pea gravel bed. Both the gravel bed and brick patio will have drainage ditches that flow over the edge of the hill. The whole goal here is to keep this upper yard from turning into a mud pit in the winter. I plan to continue moving and leveling the dirt so I can add gravel and pation stone all around the back of the house.

posted by Scott in Washington at 1:32 PM |

3 comment(s):

  • How come nobody ever posts comments to this blog. People tell me they are reading the posts but nobody with comment. Odd...

    SD

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9/02/2004 03:07:00 PM  

  • Hi Ann,

    We actually used 6x10x4" high fire kiln bricks. I'm not going to say where we got them, but will say that we we had an aluminum smelter close in our town a few years ago. I also used to regular red brick and peices of concrete slab to break up the geometric symmetry of the brick lanes. Brit likes a lot of order in her life but I tend to want randomness and maybe a bit of chaos in our projects.

    On this past Sunday, Brit and I went to the local gravel and bark dust merchant to looks at paving stone options for future projects (I'm an exciting date). People were buying regular sized bricks for a buck a peice. I know a place sort of out of the way, where over the years it has become the communally accepted place to dump broken up concrete chunks and demolished bricks. For the life of me I can't understand why people buy new ones when the older ones are free and more interesting to look at.

    Anyway, I didn't tamp them with anything although I thought about using a fence post. Also if I didn't have a problem with immediate gratification, I would have poured the 7/8th" round rock and then let it settle for a week or two before putting down the bricks. I have found that the 7/8th" is big enough not to shift under foot or under bricks but the pea gravel isn't. If you want to do a path or sitting area with pea gravel (which I think is attractive) I would reccomend putting down six inches of 7/8th with only about an inch of pea gravel. Thats what I plan to try anyway.

    SD

    By Blogger Scott in Washington, at 9/07/2004 08:58:00 AM  

  • Hi Scott! After your comments on my blog i had to come over and check out what you have going on. (Why does this damnable work get in the way of my reading all about your house?) It looks like you've done TONS of work on your place. So impressive. We're doing some projects ourselves and are hiring skilled folks for others. I cant believe all the work you've done yourself. I'll have to keep checking back to see what i can learn from you. :)

    By Blogger merideth, at 9/07/2004 02:58:00 PM  

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