Monday, August 01, 2005

Another Weekend, A Few More Stones

We worked some this weekend to complete the path. Saturday started off a little slowly and we had a lot of little decisions to make. It's surprising how many little things you have to decide when planning the patio. And the little things really matter down the line.

We also took a nap during the hottest part of the day. mmm... nap.

On Sunday we got a late start because we went to church, and then picked black berries with Gin (mother-in-law). Of course, by the time we'd finished, it was the heat of the day, so we took another nap.

The actual work on Sunday flew by, we got a lot accomplished in relatively little time.


This view shows the patio in front of the house. Note that we've left a lot of the bricks out until we get the brick saw in a week or two. We figured out the fastest system for laying the bricks - I hand them directly to her from the wheel-barrow, thereby avoiding an extra touch for each of the bricks. With another person helping, we would have been able to go much faster - using the third person to do the final path prep in front of our brick laying.

As you can see, we decided to keep the center pattern (the square bricks) simple - all the bricks are lined up straight, and the path curves in spite of the straight squares. We figured this would look nice (and it's shaping up like that), plus it makes laying the bricks a lot easier.


This shows the path extending down the side yard toward the semi-circle patio. The square bricks are now "pointing" straight down the side path which was a nice side-product of choosing the straight pattern (as opposed to trying to curve those lines). Mary also added several rows of bricks on the semi-circle - almost out to its final radius.

The whole project is going to look very nice when it's done. A beautiful path, bordered by beds of pretty flowers and plants. You just have to close your eyes and imagine.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

dood
that looks pretty sweet.
you'll be master brick layers soon.

Anonymous said...

Just beautiful. Sorry we haven't had time to help this last couple of weekends.