A 3-Day Patio

Work began mid-week for the new patio--a 6-person crew worked all day on day to prep the site. First step of course was to demo the rest of the bricks, the framing, etc. The crew quickly realized that they would have to remove all the flagstone along our walkway beside the house, since they had to be able to bring heavy machinery in. That was a surprise to all of us, and we now have our trashcans and yard waste bins smooshed under some greenery in our back yard, making trash and recycling das a bit of a challenge.

More demo, including the flagstones right at the base of the stairs (we're keeping them, but they've been stacked in a corner for now):

The flagstones have arrived! They're so pretty--much more natural than the Belgard, because, well, they are! All stone instead of a composite that looked much more like concrete than rock.

A truck bed full of gravel seemed like way too much gravel--until they used it all up by Friday and still hadn't finished filling the patio.

Because no job is without a few surprises and disappointments, here were some we uncovered--literally-- during our first week. First, a pipe with a hole in it! We knew the drainage pipes from our back gutters had to be buried under the patio, and one of our goals during this project was to find them and make sure they were in tact and unclogged. Well, we found them. This large diameter clay pipe had a pretty large chunk missing. Which also happened to be, as we recalled, where a low, often damp, spot was in our brick patio. Not a coincidence, obviously.

Here it is from a different angle--you can see the ceramic drainage pipe uncovered, and where the hole is. That hole was the most dramatic problem, requiring a a PVC pipe be coupled up to that area for about a foot, but the team uncovered a few more spots that needed amending too--most were able to be fixed with mortar. And of course this was our chance to do these repairs, while the pipes were more easily accessed. They also replaced some of our cheap corrugated black plastic drain pipes right where they joined with the metal gutter downspouts with more sturdy PVC as well.

A second problem was coming outside to see our poor magnolia, looking a bit exposed. When we plotted out the footprint of our patio, we did our best to guess where the roots would be and steered clear of them. So imagine our surprise to see the tree uncovered like this. We spoke to the design lead, who promised to tell the crew to rebury them and treat them gently after that, but hopefully no permanent damage was done.

And so work continued--the crew built a giant trench along the edge of the new patio and filled it with gravel and fat rocks, three deep, to build up the wall.

They started dumping in the gravel that seemed so copious at the beginning of the project. They packed it down. Friday was noisy.

And then that was it, for now. The gravel didn't quite fill as much as it needed to, but it was solid enough for us to walk on this weekend, and at least the piles of gravel were out of the road and driveway where they'd been for a few days. And so, three days in, here we are, ready for another week of work.