The paver project actually turned out quite well. It was quite a lot of work for both us and the contractor. In the future, though, I think we'll contract for the entire job and forgo the pain and pleasure of doing the grunt work ourselves. We dug up and moved better than 10 yards of river rock and dirt in order to prep for this project. It supposed saved us some money, but I'm not sure it was worth it. We started with this:
We moved all the river rock to a tarp in the driveway and then put an ad on Craig's List offering free to anyone who was willing to haul it away. The first load looked like this:
The pile got much higher before the first person came to get their share, and we moved about 3 more piles even larger than what you see above. Fortunately, we had enough folks willing to take the river rock that we didn't have to haul any away ourselves. Eventually, with the liberal use of shovels and pickaxes, we got the river rock out and the ground looking like this:
Fortunately, it didn't rain that entire week, otherwise it would have been a huge, muddy mess. Unfortunately, the temperature soared into the 90's that week and the heat made a difficult task even harder. On July 3rd and 4th the materials arrived for the project and we took a day off to enjoy the holiday with our family.
Then the contractors started to work. First the gravel went in:
Then Wanda decided on the pattern and the initial blocks were laid. Of course, I had to go get more gravel, then more pavers, and then more sand.....
And then, at long last, it was all done:
The contractors finished up the job while I was out shooting one of my fairy shoots. I was so glad to return home to find the pavers in place. I still had to move everything back out of the garage as well as dig and lay new sod at either end of the house, but it's done and it looks good.
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