Time for another landscaping update, and after only a week this time. A new record!

With help from my father-in-law, we actually made some surprising progress on the patio last weekend.

We dug out the mounds and leveled the dirt as best as we could without actually excavating my yard. Our yard is entirely topsoil, so it’s soft and very loose. The weight of the gravel and patio stones will sink in a bit anyway over time, so it’s probably best we didn’t dig down too far.

Since we finished so quickly, we figured we might as well keep working.

I had almost enough weed barrier to cover the whole area. That one little corner int he bottom left of the photo will be fine. Then, we started adding the gravel. We covered all but a 6′ x 6′ area with the gravel we already had, so we went out to buy 15 more bags, which did the trick.

Also, I like that you can see the passage of time from the shadows of the trees.

I know, change in angle. My bad. But we got all of the gravel down! We also bought more patio stones, which you can see stacked up in the background. Most of those are from the shitty non-patio we had before, which was sinking because it was just some stones laying in the dirt. So a lot of those will need to be washed off.

But, we might actually finish this thing this weekend! We just need to:

1. Spread sand over top. We’re getting some delivered this Saturday, which probably means they’ll dump it in our driveway and we’ll have to move it into the yard to spread over the gravel.
2. Then, we’ll need to spread the sand as evenly as possible, likely using a highly sophisticated contraption: a 2×4 and a length of twine to pull it lengthwise across the sand.
3. We’ll then rent a tamper to compact both layers into the soil beneath.
4. Finally, we’ll lay the stones! Hopefully they won’t be all uneven, because that’s why I took out the old patio in the first place.

Steve D