16. May 2010 by admin.

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15. August 2009 by admin.

Well Katie and I finished the patio a week or two ago and it came out great!  All that backbreaking labor paid off I guess. :)  After excavating the site down about 8″ we started filling the area with 3/4 crusher run which is a compacting gravel with no pieces larger than 3/4″.  We had to put down two layers of about 2-3″ each because the compacting machine can only compact that much at one time.  So here we are filling the site and keeping everything graded at the same time.  These pics are all before the compactor was run over it.

Here I am compacting the 2nd and final layer of the gravel base.

Now we layed down an inch of sand and put the pavers on top.  I layed down 7/8″ electrical conduit on the base and screed sand between them with a flat piece of wood.  Katie would bring the pavers up from the driveway and I would screed the sand and lay the pavers down.  We had a specific design from the TechoBloc the manufacturer so we knew how many rectangle and square pieces to order.  We installed a “soldier” border around the outside of the same style but different color pavers to really set it off.  We were both starting to really get tired at this point lol.

Some finished pics!  After getting all the pavers down I had to make some cuts to fill in spaces where whole blocks wouldn’t fit.  This was not fun at all.  I used a wet tile saw and got just covered in the spray.  A snap edge plastic edging was placed around the entire patio to hold the pavers and to keep the sand from washing out.  These are held in place by 10″ galvanized spikes every 18″ or so.  Alas, all the cuts were made and a polymeric sand got swept across the patio to fill in the spaces between the pavers.  Then I had to compact the pavers twice with the compactor, sweeping the special sand over the whole thing between compactions.  After the 2nd compaction, I made sure there was no sand on the surface and then wet everything down with a mist to activate the polymers that are mixed in with the sand.  Success!

The snap edge andthe soldier border.

Special spot for the grill.

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25. July 2009 by admin.

 I’ve been doing lots of digging lately…and its all come to an end!  The Yellow groove bamboo came yesterday and got planted in the “bamboo zone”.  The tops got cut off for shipping but they all have leaves on them.  I can’t wait for them to fill the entire area and shoot up to 15 feet!

The patio area is also all excavated and grated.  I basically had a string attached to a stake in the inner corner set at the final paver height.  I then extended it over the patio area and staked it on the other side so I had a tight line to measure the correct excavation depth.  I did this every couple feet all the way around using the sa me string and a garden rake.

Eventually I made it all the way around and the whole space is graded to 7.5-8″ under the tops of where the pavers are going to be. 4-5″ of crushed stone will go on the dir, then get compacted , followed by an inch of sand and the pavers on top of that.

All of the “crusher run” got delivered into our driveway today so thats what we’ll be doing tomorrow.

Nice pic of the new solar birdbath in action.

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20. July 2009 by admin.

The rhizome barrier material for the bamboo finally came today!  I ordered it over 2 weeks ago but the company I ordered it from only ships on Mondays.  The trench was dug so that 3″ of the barrier material would stick up higher than the ground/dirt level.  This is so that it is easy to spot and clip any rhizomes that try and escape over the barrier.

I ordered 55′ of 24′ wide 60mil thick material and some two-sided tape with polyethylene glue to seal the overlap.

Getting the material into the trench actually wasn’t as easy as I thought.  Its pretty heavy and the trench is pretty narrow in some spots.  But, alas, I got it all in and put three vertical strips of tape on the barrier and even overlapped it by 12 feet; better safe than sorry. :)  Once I got the material in I compacted the soil around the bottom edge and hosed it down to get it nice and compact.  You want to compact the lower 12″ of soil so the bamboo has less of a reason to go deep.  After that, it was time for some pasta with a vegetable medley sauce for dinner with Katie!  Tomorrow, I’ll finish filling in and around the trench and start grading the patio area.

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19. July 2009 by admin.

We’ve been doing a lot of work this past week and weekend on the back yard.  We’ve planted a few Miscanthus ornamental grasses and bunch of perennials.  The Forest Pansy tree got planted last monday too!  All the big granite rocks were dug up out of the bamboo trench.  The bamboo barrier material comes tomorrow!

Our backyard is closed in with fence so we actually let Moxie out in the backyard today for a couple of hours.  She had fun chasing around bugs and butterflies but eventually she had to go back inside.

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11. July 2009 by admin.

Today we went to some nurseries and greenhouses and bought a new tree for the backyard that will be delivered on Tuesday!  Its a Forest Pansy.  I’m trying to dig out an old stump of a tree where this new one will go and am going to borrow a chainsaw tomorrow to try and get it out.

Besides the new tree which isn’t here yet, we got some hand bent iron hooks for the two pillars on the front porch and Katie planted some petunias and other flowers in them.

Next up for the front is a new hanging light that comes on Monday… and eventually a new storm door.

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4. July 2009 by admin.

We’ve been designing what we want our back patio to look like for a while and I’ve recently started work on the excavation.  We are opting for a 20′ strip of Yellow Groove bamboo along the fence.  It will get 15′-20′ high in just 2-3 years and screen off the neighbors house for some nice privacy and shade.  In order to do this however, I had to make a rhizome barrier trench on the outside of the bamboo since bamboo spreads like crazy.  Its hard to tell from the pics, but I just finished digging the trench today.  Its 24″ deep and plastic sheet made to block the bamboo from escaping will go in the trench and surround the planted bamboo.  It’ll be easier to make sense of it once things really get going!

The dug up area is basically where the patio will go with a planting strip for flowers/shrubs along the garage.

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4. May 2009 by admin.

Half of the boards on our front stoop were rotting and coming detatched from the stair stringers and joists, so it was time to replace the boards, so I thought…  I thought I would do that until I realized that the joists underneath were cracked and rotten as were the stair stringers.  THere was no way any new nails or screws would’ve held.  So I basically had to start from scratch, which was a good thing since I could use proper deck wood and secure everything properly too.  I attached new joists and also sistered them to the existing ones and put in new 4×4 supports in the front.  Here are some pics so far, I’m hoping to have everything finished tomorrow, then I can stain everything in about a month or so once the treated wood dries out.  We also transplanted the rhododendrin closer to the house and will put some miniature mountain laurel in front of them once the steps are done.

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4. May 2009 by admin.

A couple weeks ago we planted a jane Magnolia tree in the front yard.  It still has some of the flowers on it, but the leaves are coming out now.

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