Published by JPLand on 06 Apr 2009 at 12:42 pm
Stoned
I like to working outside in the yard. One of the best kind of tireds is one from having accomplished a lot of yard work. There are only two problems with this. (1) I’m allergic to about 98.3% of outside and (2) I usually have no clue what I’m doing. The clouds parted momentarily this weekend, so I seized the opportunity breathe in some more allergens and to demonstrate my lack of landscaping skill/knowledge.
We have a faucet by our deck that likes to leak on occasion. Because of this, water pools around the area and provides a safe haven for weeds and mud. An area that originally looked very pretty with river rocks and landscaping timbers has turned into a mucky mess over the past 2-3 years. With my yard tools and my “helpful” daughters by my side, I decided to lay some stepping stones to help with the problem.
The first order of action was to remove the old rocks and weeds. I actually started this last weekend, but went inside at one point to run a small errand and didn’t return. The vacant rocks and torrential rains made this area a nice mud puddle. So, Butterfly helped me get a bunch of sand to help even out the ground and give me something to work with.
There are several “secrets” to laying stones in the yard like this. One of these is having an even surface. I know that somewhere in my brain, I can figure out a way to make a surface even. However, my brain wasn’t available for this project, so I went with the “rake-the-sand-until-it-looks-good” technique. For your home projects, I recommend a different technique. Doesn’t matter which one it is, it just needs to be different than this one.
The lattice that is visible along the bottom portion of the deck 
is actually a door. It hinges at the top and allows me (as well as small critters) to get to the crawl space under the house. The entry is just beyond the view of these photographs. Unfortunately, the door was sized for reaching the ground, so adding stones keeps the door from opening. I did a quick feasibility study and concluded that ripping the door off would be a good solution. I hope to make a smaller door and install it later. I also hope someone will hand me a million dollars later this afternoon. I don’t expect either of these to happen.
After I “leveled” the sand and put down some landscaping fabric, it was time to put some rocks out. This was easy because it required more grunt work than brains. For a real stone installation, the installer would have some type of grout between the rocks. I, however, do not think that I’m all that great of an installer and I fully expect something to go wrong in the near future. So, instead of concrete grout, I decided that sand would work. It fills in the cracks and allows water to seep/drain as needed. More importantly, it’s easy to work with when I have to pull the stones up to fix something that I discover later down the road. This is part of the project when Butterfly’s attention waned towards the playground and Ladybug decided to join me.
Ladybug grabbed her child-sized wheel barrow and followed me to get a load of sand. I put some in for her to carry back, but she quickly caught on to my ploy and said “It too heavy, Daddy. Daddy carry it.” We made it back and while I put sand around the area, Ladybug busied herself by hiding my tools in the sand, followed by “making cookies” with the nearby dirt and rocks. She continually offered these to the dogs as a snack.
Prior commitments caused me to stop a little before the project was completed. Here’s what it looked like when we put the tools down. Pippin doesn’t seem to mind it too much. Ladybug is still trying to feed Merry some of her sand cookies.
