Kaitlin spent a long, hot summer trying to care for the pool. She turned the filter on each morning and off each evening. She learned not to buy diluted shocker and applied the shocker to the pool once a week. She monitored the pH levels to make sure the chemicals were balanced. And once, just once, she got in the pool...
...so she neglected the pool, resulting in the growth of a thick, nasty layer of green algae, which had to be scrubbed off and drained and scrubbed some more until finally it was clean. And the pool went down. Then the pool went up, on Craigs List...where the pool sold for $200! Which provided a little start-up money for the Post-Pool Project, for which I recruited Aaron's help. The Post-Pool Project would be a paver-patio with stone firepit, perfect for the quickly approaching fall season.
First Step: Remove the stupid foam pieces to prepare the patio site. I don't know why the previous owners chose to use these foam squares as the flooring for their pool space, but it did not work very well. So, we moved them all and cleaned them off and are planning to post them to Craigs List as well.
Second Step: Measure and mark-off the area. Now, we did actually take a first-and-a-half step, which was to choose our pavers. This was important to do before measuring, so we could ensure we would mark a space that would fit an even number of pavers. Otherwise, we would've had to cut the stone shorter, which would have been a real pain. The beautiful Belgium Reversible pavers we chose were a variety of shapes, five of which could be combined to make 15 x 15" squares. We decided on creating a 12 x 12-paver space and calculated an extra 2.5" on each edge for the retaining wall/edging. So, we measured and marked-off a 15.5 x 15.5" area.
Third Step: Remove 6" of dirt from the patio space. This was the worst step of all. We calculated later that we removed 4 TONS of dirt...it took 5 hours and was probably the most exhausted my body has been since high school sports. We dug the dirt and piled it on tarps around the area. Which consequently led us to our next problem...what do we do with all this dirt?
Fourth Step: Dispose of the dirt. There are a some options here:
- Post dirt to Craigs List (people will take free dirt, who knew?)
- If available, dump in secluded area of land (which is what my dad could have done)
- Hide around yard in places that need leveling
Obviously, we "hid" the dirt, which is not very pretty now, but does set the yard up nicely for some spring landscaping! This took another full day of filling our borrowed wheelbarrow (thank you Taylor!) with loads of dirt and dispersing them in various areas of the yard. Then raking them out and hand-stamping them down.
Now, we had a little break. Who would've though the week days could be considered a break? We needed the materials to be delivered, which costs $60, so we wanted to buy all the materials at once. We took some time debating quantities and finally came up with these numbers:
Paver Base (gravel) = 50 bags
Leveling Sand = 50 bags
Stone = 720 blocks of various shapes and colors
Fifth Step: Receive delivery of materials. The materials pulled up to our little neighborhood on THIS. The bed of the truck was unlatched from the cab and the cab doubled as a forklift, which then removed the four pallets of supplies to our driveway. It was unreal.
Sixth Step: Transport and lay paver base in sections. Aaron carried wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of paver base up the slope to the backyard while I poured out the bags and spread them within the sections we marked. We leveled out the final area, with a slight slope (so water will drain a bit without just settling) and hand-stamped the area.
Now in the normal pit-to-patio process, the next break would be here. It would pick back up with laying the leveling sand and then the stone. But we had a bit of a situation: it was supposed to rain tomorrow. While we thought there was probably enough time to lay the sand, we didn't think we could get the stones down before tomorrow and didn't want the sand exposed to the rain. So, with daylight hours to burn, we started the process of moving the remaining sand and stone up the slope to the backyard.
Seventh Step: Haul your materials (in 50+ trips) to the patio site. I cannot praise Aaron enough for this job...I helped move and remove the stones from the wheelbarrow, but he made every trip of base, sand and stone up the hill to the pit. I would have died...and it would have taken me twice the number of trips.
So, this is where #thepit is now: paver base laid, and materials standing by for the time (and weather) when we can finish this sucker up. It has been an eye-opening, exhausting, not-yet-rewarding experience, but I am still optimistic about the finished product! It's been incredibly helpful working with Aaron to push me through the digging blisters and raking backaches...I would even go as far as to say it's been really fun!
Stay tuned for The Post-Pool Project, Part 2! And keep your fingers crossed for us...
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