What Will We Do with the Pavers

 Right after Roger told me about the free pavers, he asked me "what can we do with them?"  At that time, I really didn't know  how we would use the pavers and I really didn't have time to think about it, either.  Part of the deal was that we needed to get the pavers off site before the demo crew brought their dump truck back to fill with all the debris and that included the pavers.

Stacking pavers is very boring so I had a lot of time to think about what we could do with all those pavers.  The pavers are various shades of brown so I don't want to use them close to the house. We want an exposed aggregate concrete patio to match the existing sidewalks and the house is grey.  Then it hit me like a ton of pavers.  We could build a large round patio under the large willow tree.  That area is very shaded and cool in the summer.

The brown of the pavers will match the dirt in that area because we will not have grass due to the shade.  But will have hostas and ferns because of the shade.  Plus, I didn't buy any hostas this year and I am jonesing to buy hostas.  Lots of hostas....sorry I can't help myself.

The ground under the willow is slightly sloped so I estimate 1 layer of retaining block buried and then transitioning into 2 layers on the low side.  When we broke apart the swimming pool we kept the wide concrete bull nose coping pieces.  They are 12 inches by 24 wide and have a bull nose on one side.  They are weathered because they are from the 1930's but I like the non new look.  We will need to rent a concrete saw to cut angles so we can form a 18 edged circle using rectangular pieces. 

The bull nose concrete pieces are very close to the same thickness as the pavers so I think that our only costs will be sand, crushed stone, renting the saw, and polymeric sand.  It would be great to keep costs as low as possible because we want a pool but that can't happen until we finish the back of the house.

 I did some very rough drawings and the patio will be at least 12 feet in diameter.  We have a square gas fire pit and 2 heavy handcrafted wrought iron tables, that I purchased at auction on the cheap.  The tables have wood tops but I want to cast concrete tops for them and a concrete top for the square gas fire pit.  That will repeat the patio bull nose coping pieces.

What will we use for seating?  We love Adirondack chairs but not the plastic ones nor the wood ones.  We want to be able to leave the tables and chairs outside year round.  We already have enough 'stuff' to store every year.  So we are going to deconstruct our wood ones and trace the pieces onto solid PVC boards.  This will be pricey and but they will be heavy and not blow over in a storm.  Build them once and they should last a long time and only require periodic scrubbing.

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Gratuitous kitty photos.

So that's the plan.

And as always...

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A Whole Lotta Free Pavers

 In the beginning of August we had to stop work on clearing the new land to go and pick up a whole lot of free pavers.  Of course it was 90 degrees and they needed to be gone ASAP.  

It took us 3 days of working in 90 degree temperatures and sometime rainy weather to get them all removed from where they were located.  It then took us another three days to empty two trailers and two pickup trucks full of pavers.

Roger loaded up the bucket on the tractor with the pavers and then carefully dumped them on the ground behind the barn.  Then I would stack them on pallets.  We already had a small pallet of this style of pavers but with the added pavers we can do a much larger project.  More about the project in the next post.

There were several styles of pavers.  First there were the whole pavers like in the photo above.  Then there were factory half pavers that were basically a whole paver cut lengthwise.  Then there were miscellaneous cut pavers and retaining wall pieces.  Each style went on a separate pallet.

Laying down the first layer is important because you have to make sure to span the open area between the boards so that the paver doesn't fall through.  Then each layer after that is rotated 180 degrees so that you don't form tall towers of pavers that could loosen and fall away.  This way it is all held into place by the layer below and above. 

By this time, my fingers were hurting and because I do not wear gloves, except when working with sheet metal,  I found my hands were getting smooth callouses on my fingers and I also think my finger prints were ground away.

When all was said and done we have 3 large pallets of whole pavers,  one smaller pallet of half pavers and pieces, and a small pallet of retaining wall pieces.  We also have between 30 and 40 16X16 patio slabs and 30 10X16 grey concrete slabs that we plan to use to make a path through a large hosta bed planned for an area of dense trees.  

I was so happy when I laid that last paver.  When I injured my wrist last year when my flip flop fell apart and I fell on my hand, I ended up with several crooked fingers.  I am pleased to say after picking up and laying down over 2400 pavers that my fingers are now straight.  My fingernails look horrible but the fingers are straight.

The next post will be about what we are going to do with these pavers.  So until then remember to...

Reuse Repurpose Recycle

Moving Pavers and Making a Lumber List

Some tasks are interesting and other are just plain old boring.  Today's task was boring but it will lead to a more interesting task down the road. 

We want to remove that old flood light, strip off the old yellow paint, paint it dark grey with white trim to match the house, and install two vintage casement windows where the loft doors are located but first......

....all this stuff has to go somewhere else so we can place a ladder against the barn.  

The pavers were given to me and I plan to use them as the floor for my little greenhouse when I finally buy one.  But until then, we will stack them on pallets behind the barn.

All the garden implements need to go back inside the barn.  We have been lax and have just gotten into the habit of leaning them against the stacks of pavers.  There must be 3 snow shovels in that mess and lets hope we won't be needing those for a while.

The vintage casement windows that I bought a couple of years ago will go in the opening for the loft doors.  We will need to make the opening smaller to accommodate these vintage windows.  The original trim around the loft doors will remain in place but we will make the opening smaller and trim it out so that the existing trim looks wider.  According to my rough calculations we will need to narrow the opening 3 inches on each side and bring the sill up about 4 inches. I will finish up my lumber list after R moves old race car parts that he has stored in front of the loft window.  I currently can't get close enough to measure, so my lumber list is more a guesstimate.

I also want to add a window box to this opening just like the window boxes that we have on the house.

But first we need to move the pavers.  Today we moved one stack before we ran out of energy and our hands were so sore that we couldn't pick up any more pavers.  I was the stacker and R loaded up the pavers into wheelbarrows and brought them to me. 

It totally ruined my manicure, too.

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