Now that the pad for the patio and pathway between the garden and patio have been cleaned and prepared by removing all dirt and tree roots, it’s time for the gravel.

(click thumbnails to enlarge image)

The gravel gets delivered by a local rental place.

Chris and I get to work spreading the ‘3/4″ minus’ gravel. Most tutorials and how-to’s say to use 4 inches of gravel, but I have asked around and some “experts” have told me that 2-3 inches is fine.

Now I am using a plate tamper to pack the gravel. I first hosed it down lightly and this helps it to stay packed when finished. I made two passes going opposite directions, making sure it was just damp but not soaking wet.

Just in time, our block is delivered and set right where we wanted it.

After packing the gravel down we are making ore starting corner. It must be a perfect 90 deg. angle so the block stays true throughout the laying process. We used a “3-4-5” method using our string line (measure up one side 3 feet, up the other side 4 feet, then measure across the two points you made and it should be exactly 5 feet) we were extremely lucky and it was perfect the first time! (my great eyeballing)

Ok, as if the kitchen remodel wasn’t enough, now we are tearing out the back yard and making it a more inviting and livable space. We are putting in a block patio with a small tiered fountain on one corner and we also decided to improve the flower beds and convert our existing patio into a deck.

Here are some “before” shots of the patio area at the far end of our yard, the flower beds along the house, and the existing patio that we are going to convert into a deck.

(click thumbnails to enlarge image)

First off we had to remove the dilapidated old flower bed in the corner and remove the old dirt.

Then we cut the grass with a rented sod cutter. This was used to cut down below the grass and easily remove the grass in big 12″ to 18″ pieces. We did this for the patio area and the extended flower beds as well.

After removing the sod we had to remove the small tree roots and layers of dirt to get down to the final depth. I opted to use the sod cutter twice again as it cuts a uniform 2″ depth on each pass, then all you do is scoop out the loose dirt. We used the loose dirt from the patio excavation to fill in the widened flower beds.

The sod cutter only get so close to the fence, shed, etc.  so we had to go around with a pick to remove dirt to the level of the rest of the pad

Moving the flower beds out also meant we had to move the sprinkler heads out to the new edge of the grass