Paver Progress

Anyone who visits our back yard will now see visible changes.  We got up early, worked hard, and are pleased with our progress.  As everyone knows, a good paver job depends totally on good preparation.  That is what we did today.

The completed pile of pavers shows how much work we have ahead of us.

We started with moving the final pallet of pavers from the front yard into four locations: the pile in the back yard, a small pile of pavers in the garage, and two more small piles on the concrete lining the north side of the house.

A select pile of pavers waiting to be installed
on the north side of the house.

Last night in the middle of the night, I realized that putting all of the pavers in the back yard would be stupid since the first part of our work will be the front approach to the north gate.  We piled those pavers in the garage where we could easily reach them.  Then we did the same with other pavers which we will use as we work our way to the back yard.  Why move pavers further than we have to? By staging them where we have, we will be able to more quickly fill in the pavers as we work.

After the pavers were where we wanted them, Rick continued to work outside in placing 2 x 4s as guides for the pavers.  I went inside to get some laundry and weekly cleaning completed.  Once that was done, I went back outside to discover that Rick had started to dig out the north side yard.

The first part of the north yard is dug down about
six inches deep.

I took over the digging for a while, and Rick hauled the dirt away and spread it around the low areas by our new sheds.  We quit when we ran out of shade which coincided when we had run out of energy.  We agreed that we would work each morning, but that we will be finished by noon.  If we do not do that, we will be working too much in the sun, and I will damage my muscles from too much stress.

We used the dug out dirt to fill in the low spots around the sheds.

This will be a slow process, but in the end we hope that it will have a paved north side yard and a patio surrounded by a solid surface rather than mud and grass.