Day one Excavate the area.
If I had only known what this really would mean. I don't know why in all of the places that I read about putting in a patio not ONE of them mentioned how long this would take compared to the rest of the project and how to accurately determine how much wast dirt you would be left with. I felt like the POW on the movie the great Escape" trying to find creative ways to hide dirt.
the excavation took about 6hours. with john and myself working almost non stop.
Step 2: fill in large hole that you just dug.
then we spent the rest of the day filling up the area with Crushed granite gravel. I am so glad john was there because this was so heavy!! We only got part of the way done and john had to go out of town unexpectedly and so I was left with finishing the rest of the project on my own.
Luckly I still had one of the best helpers Ever
how do you move a mountain of crushed Granite? one shovel full at a time.
Rocky and did so well moving all of the Gravel. I only had one wheelbarrow full of gravel tip over one me and luckly nobody saw. (did you know that wheelbarrows are a lot like a hand cart except you push one and pull the other and handcarts have two wheels.)
Step three: compact Gravel
the last step of the day was to compress it all down. being the do it yourself-er that I am I decided just to buy a hand tamper instead of renting a plate compactor. I was a little worried about how long this would take but actually I was able to compress the whole thing in about an hour.
Step four: level sand on top of gravel.
I hope I can get this step done before the rain comes and washes away the big pile of sand in our driveway.
No comments:
Post a Comment