Patio: Part 3
This weekend we worked (again) on the patio. It was a gorgeous weekend - sunny and low 80s. That's crazy weather for May and early June in Seattle but we were happy with it. It did get a little warm and Hank did a lot of laying in the grass under the tree. It's nice to have weather like this but it makes me worry more and more about global warming.
Anyway, this post isn't about global warming. It's about our patio. We moved a lot of stone around (we're beginning to feel like this is "the summer of moving stone" but I hope not). We also rented a plate compactor (that's the picture you see above). It's really heavy and as loud as it is heavy and it compacts all the gravel down tightly so it doesn't shift too much when you put the gigantic, heavy stones on it. It took us a while to pick up the compactor and get it home and get it into the backyard. It was sort of anti-climactic to use it because it took all of about 10 minutes to compact the gravel once we get it back there. Then we had to get it back our front, into the car and return it to the rental place. We're learning a lot in this process. Hank hated the gravel compacter. Too loud. He hid behind the garbage cans. It's funny, most loud noises don't bother him. But he hated this thing. And he hates the salad spinner. Go figure. He's funny.
After the gravel is compacted, the sand is next. So we started hauling sand from the front yard to the backyard in the wheelbarrow. Laying out the sand is going to be tricky. We laid it out in one section and starting laying the rocks but the rocks are so uneven in their thickness that an even layer of sand under them doesn't really work. So we decided that we would lay the sand as we go depending on the size of the next rock we were laying. That worked our pretty well. We got four (!) rocks laid down. No pictures of those yet but I'll take some soon. We're concentrating on getting the bigger rocks laid down on the outside for stability. The biggest rocks are HUGE, so they're hard to move and position but we're getting there. It's so exciting!
More pictures here.