So close!

Today was stairbuilding day.  Thanks to my beau for cutting stringers for me last night, after I struggled with the circular saw yesterday and ended up blistered and grumpy.  I decided to simply patch over the old decking that was still attached to the house--attached so well I'd have needed to resort to removing concrete screws to get it removed--and this is what I ended up with:

 This is my end-of-the day shot, after building the steps and the little boxy business against the house, and then laying some weed guard and filling with rock.  The red cinders are a local color and fit the environment here nicely, and their redness is a nice contrast with the light grey blocks.

I had just a little energy left after clearning up, so I made this cairn.

The very last bits of the project will be adding dirt back into the flower beds and planting, and doing a little more detailing with rock.

I have 2 pavers left to place, and a group of about 4 in the very back corner that I want to lift and re-place.  Then it's edging time and (yay!) time to get to work on the decorative work around the edges.

By the time I was about halfway through my pile of slabs I was finally figuring out how to regularly get them dropped just right.  The trick seems to be to not focus on the inside edges/corners, but rather to align the outside edge or corner with the surrounding slabs and then let go--and let gravity plop that sucker tightly down in the corner.  Otherwise fingers and gloves end up in the way and the slab drops all cattywampus.  Or worse, it goes in on its edge or corner and messes up the sand.

The patio is actually a bit bigger than this but I can't get the entire thing in the frame, at least not from the house.

Screeded?  Scrod?  Scrud?

After a bit of a screeding snafu I got the sand layered on gravel and leveled.  Dragging a 2x4 across two pieces of 1 inch PVC pipe worked pretty well although I find I barely have enough material.  This strikes me as a little odd since the math I did before ordering materials had me using less sand than I ordered.

Slabs look pretty flat from this angle.

What the heck.  Live and learn.

The pavers are going down.  Funny how from some angles they look nice and even and from others they seem a bit off kilter.  I think I have stared at them too long today so I am going to hang up my tools and come back with a clear head on Sunday or Monday.

From here the slabs seem a bit uneven

.

It strikes me that the instructions people give for a project like this may be excessively detailed in some respects, while being deficient in others.  People seem to be really concerned with making everything straight, though --at least with slabs this large-- it's easy to see when things are not straight so eyeballing things seems to be fine.  On the other hand I wish I knew exactly how to handle the edges.  I measured and added gravel and sand only to the measurements of the finished patio, because I figured I'd need to add edging with stakes and wanted those to go into the lawn.  But I think it may have been wiser to add half a foot to all the dimensions, all around the edge.  I'm filling in an inch or so of dirt on the very sides of the patio.  In my climate and with a sandy soil I think this will be okay, but I suppose there is some potential for things to sink and the pavers to become unlevel as the dirt at those edges settles.

Moving the pavers is surpisingly easy.  Laying them down evenly is a little hard because I want to lay all their weight on an edge in the sand....which leads to smushed sand and an uneven slab.

Finally! 

The pavers are here.  These are gonna be sweet.  Yes, they are pretty heavy, but I can manage them on my own and if there were two people working with them, moving them would be easy.

Just one little complication....

I was greeted this morning at 8:10 by a guy in an ancient dump truck (sorry, no pictures) who looked like he'd seen some work over the years.  A sinewy older guy with that sun-blinded look you sometimes see on pictures of civil war soldiers and cowboys. 

He walked up to me, took off his hat, bowed and said, "Greetings, fair lady."  What a great start to the day!

He left me with 2 yards of base gravel and one of sand, placed neatly in piles just as I wished BUT the truck couldn't maneuver into the back with this stuff, so I spent the day going back and forth to the front yard every time I needed another wheelbarrow load.  Oh, well.  Wheelbarrowing isn't so bad.

Before adding in the gravel I drove some marked chopsticks into the site at about 2-foot intervals, measuring each one to stick up about 4" and to be level with the others. 

Almsot as versatile as duct tape!

This worked pretty well as a guide to my gravel-dumping, though with 90% of the gravel moved I am still a bit low in much of the patio space but if the gravel is for drainage I think we'll be okay.  This is a desert after all. 

Next step: some more-serious compacting of the gravel and addition of dirt to the site to hold the gravel better, then it's time for sand.

It's starting to look patio-like!

Materials are ordered, and the digging is done.

 This weekend is for R&R, with the exception of about half an hour's worth of junk-moving that will allow a dumptruck into the side yard on Monday.

I can use the rest. 

Now that THAT's done:

It's time to move on to the next stage of the project, which is the construction of our patio.  After putting the yard back together at the conclusion of the sewer part of the project, I spent a good part of today taking the patio area back apart.  My excavation revealed the presence of lots of big roots from our beautiful elm right at the surface in several places where we planned to put pavers. But the Plan B I drew out today looks like it may not only work around the roots but also provide us with more useable paved areas, and it could be simpler to put together.

Tomorrow is commitment day, when I place the order for base gravel, sand, edging and the concrete slabs.

Here are some photos of the most recent work.

Here is some dirt that I have been removing

Here is some dirt that needs to move....tomorrow's project

My trusty wheelbarrow.  In red of course.

The dirt pile.  I must have about 2 cubic yards here.