I dumped all the gravel on the driveway so I could use BamBamm to get the bricks while the guys worked on spreading the gravel out over the patio area. |
|
1-1.5 inch of gravel was spread on top of the dirt. |
|
One shovel full at a time. It acutally went pretty fast with two people. |
|
The gutter drain pipe was set down to form the edge of where the gravel goes. Later, more gravel and bricks will be layed down to form a path from here to the front door. |
|
One guy starts digging the trench for the drain pipe while the other finishes stamping the gravel down. |
|
Both guys working on the 16 feet of trench. Was kind of a pain because of the roots from the tree, but some heavy shovel and use of a saw took care of them. |
|
The gutter will have piping from the bottom of the gutter tube out to a T and out 8 feet in two directions which will be more then enough for drainage. |
|
300 x 12x12x2 inch bricks weights, A LOT! Good thing BamBamm was up to the task or this would have been several trips of hand loaded bricks one by one. |
|
BamBamm hanging low with all that weight! Even with 4 max inflated tires in rear, they were bulging a bit. |
|
The first row getting put down. |
|
This row took the longest as its the base for the rest. |
|
The start of day 2. A little more than half was done yesterday. It was perfect weather yesterday but rained until about 5 minutes before this photo, so everythign is wet, including the gravel which made it more difficult to work with. |
|
Woot! Most the bricks have been used. |
|
None of us had done this before, so a few mistakes were done and had to be corrected along the way. Here some bricks were removed and redone at the correct height using a level off the cement. After, I put up a string across the area they were working in so it was easier to see if the bricks were at the correct height. |
|
All done!! One pallet of gray bricks did not have enough for the whole job, so the store had to get some gray bricks from another pallet. But as you can see, they are slightly different (the lighter color ones on the left). Not as noticable when they are dry. I'm hoping its just some of the gunk built up from being in storage (like the stuff you see on the red bricks) and hope that a good pressure washing will even them all out. |
|
Unfortunately not all was perfect with our measurements, so as you can see, its not exactly parallel to the cement (assuming the cement is not at an angle itself). But it's good enough and near the effort to pull up the bricks and start again. For now the gravel filler is just temporary. We will be filling it in with cut bricks or with stepables (small condensed plants you can walk on without damaging). |
|
All extra gravel was put in the pathway area and ramped up to the bricks to help hold the outer bricks in place until we do the driveway. Not 100% sure yet, but I'm pretty sure we will end up doing the walkway the same as the patio. |
|
Here you can see the end of the piping we installed for the gutter to drain under ground. It goes down about a foot under the gravel and makes a 90 degree turn out to the dirt area you see where it intersects with a T which goes right and left 8 feet for a total of 16 feet of perforated piping draining. |
|
Getting a few shots of the area without the gazebo (for before and after shots). |
|
|
|