Project 563

Backyard Hardscaping part 2: The Driveway Plus How To Install a Brick Patio

Kristin — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:00:58 +0000

Driveway Subgrade

Our contractor installed the subgrade under both the driveway and patio sites: compacted crushed angular gravel to a depth of 18 inches under the driveway and 12 inches under the patio. Then it was our turn.

DRIVEWAY

For the driveway, we used Cobble Systems fan pattern in charcoal. The neat thing about Cobble Systems is that the cobbles come strung together in little sheets, so we didn’t have to spend hours arranging our pattern. It was really very easy to use, and I recommend it.

Finished Driveway!

Full disclaimer: I was conveniently “busy at the hospital” with “nursing school” on the day of installation, so Aaron and John had to do all the work. But they got it all done in a single afternoon, so I think it was pretty easy.

The installation involved setting the cobbles in a layer of sand on top of the compact subgrade surface and then going over them with a vibrating plate compactor (rented from our local hardware store). We then used a stiff broom to brush polymeric sand in between the cobbles. The polymeric sand “sets up” once it gets wet, similar to concrete, and is better for preventing weed growth. The polymeric sand had to go down onto dry cobbles on a dry, sunny day. After we meticulously brushed it all off the tops of the cobbles and into the gaps in between, we hosed down the driveway (using the mist setting to avoid blasting the sand out of the cracks) to set up the sand.

The downside to Aaron and John working by themselves is we have no photos of the driveway installation. When I’m around, I use photography as an excuse to shirk my work duties. Photos are a valid justification for laziness, in my opinion.

PATIO

For the patio, we measured out the dimensions to the nearest brick-length (allowing for a little space between each brick), marked the edges, and installed paver restraint edging along the borders. We then put down a layer of all purpose sand 1 inch thick. To do this, we lay 1-inch PVC pipes on the subgrade, filled in between with sand, and then used a 2×4 to screed it level. We didn’t lay all the sand at once; we laid enough for a few rows of bricks and then used those bricks as a platform from which we could do more work.

Patio Construction: edging, sand on subgrade, and bricks! (And no, I am not a double amputee.)

Next came the fun part–laying the bricks! Our bricks were all different sizes, which meant digging out sand under some and putting extra sand under others so they would all be level. We pounded them with a rubber mallet to make sure they didn’t wiggle in the sand–if a brick wiggled, we simply lifted it up and added more sand to any low spots. After we laid a few courses, we dumped some sand on top and used a stiff broom to sweep it over the bricks so it would fall in between them. We used loose sand (unlike the polymeric sand in the driveway, which “sets up”), so there is a possibility of sandy feet if we walk barefoot on the patio. But isn’t that the point? Feet are supposed to get dirty from going barefoot outside! We’ll see if I change my opinion about those dirty feet with the coming of warmer weather this spring.

Also, we didn’t use the vibrating plate compactor on the patio for a few reasons. For one, our bricks are old and rather fragile. Secondly, some have text or indentations on the top as part of the character, and we didn’t want to ruin this. The patio is pretty level, but we’ll have to wait to see if not compacting the bricks causes them to shift.

If you’re looking to do this yourself, we found the Lowe’s videos (part one and part two) to be very helpful.

Checking for Brick Wiggle

Partially Finished Patio

Finished Patio and Driveway

Finished Patio

Backyard Hardscaping (I smell a lawsuit)

Kristin — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:00:13 +0000

Our contractor was just about to start working to restore our backyard to working order when the ice storm came. This was mid November 2010, a little earlier than normal for our area, and the ground froze solid. And while our winters are typically mild, it remained uncharacteristically frigid from mid-November through February. Which meant that our backyard was a mud pit for four months. Too frozen for our contractors to work, yet still somehow muddy enough that Carmen-the-dog tracked muddy footprints throughout the house if we let her in the backyard. Plus there was no fence, so we couldn’t really let her out there anyway. This meant additional walks first thing in the morning and last thing at night, in the dark, cold, and freezing rain. All winter long. We refer to last winter as “the dark times.”

Carmen enjoying the mud pit

Finally in March, it was warm enough to break ground, and our contractors came and prepared the base for our driveway and patio and built the wall. Now, it was about this time that I arrived home one afternoon to find a kid playing in our backyard. Apparently, a mud pit along his usual walk home from school is a fun place to play. He left when I came in, so I didn’t say anything. Aaron and I decided to hurry to get our fence built.

Aaron keeps the laborers in line

John and Nancy (best in-laws ever!) came down for a weekend to help us get all the fence posts in the ground and hang the stringers. Aaron, our technical specialist, made a few decisions regarding fence construction. First, we decided to set 1/2 of the above-ground post height, or 1/3 of the total post height, in the ground to prevent leaning, which meant that our 6-ft tall posts extend 3 feet into the ground, for a total length of 9 feet. This meant we had to purchase 12-foot long posts. They were massive, and people thought we were building a fortress until we cut the excess off. Second, we decided to set the posts in crushed angular gravel rather than concrete. The gravel facilitates drainage away from the post, and it is easier to remove the posts in the future when they inevitably rot and need to be replaced in ten or fifteen years. More information about this is available from Tim at Ask the Builder.

Things were looking good until Monday, when I came home and saw the same kid climbingon our newly erected jungle gym. This time, his mother was there. She said to me, “I told him he won’t be able to play in there once your fence is done.” Well, that’s good to know, I guess. Except he probably shouldn’t be playing in there now, what with the piles of rubble and construction debris and boards with rusty nails sticking out of them. That, and the fence isn’t really designed to hold dynamic human loads. It’s not exactly a kid-friendly zone at the moment. But what do I know?

Fence framing/jungle gym

So we hurried up and finished the fence and hung the gate up to keep wandering miscreants from stepping on rusty nails and getting tetanus and having their parents sue us. Imagine my surprise when I came home the next week and saw a different kid sitting on the top of our fence! He then jumped down into our backyard. The original offender was already in there. I yelled at them, something about “keep out of here, you’re going to get hurt!” and they left.

It’s true; our backyard is a dangerous place at the moment! And I certainly don’t want to get sued. But still, I felt bad for yelling at them. I mean, once when I was a kid, my Uncle Larry scolded me and I thought he was mean for YEARS. (It’s funny how children’s minds distort things; Uncle Larry is actually very nice.) I guess if these kids think I’m mean and are afraid of me, at least it means they won’t break their arms falling off my fence. And since then, I have not seen any evidence of unwanted visitors in the backyard, so I guess it’s all right.

Backyard Devastation (alternatively titled The Geothermal Process)

Kristin — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:59:06 +0000

We lost our backyard a few weeks back. I know this sacrifice is temporary, but it still stings a little. The dog seems a little depressed without her home turf, and I may have cried a little as we chopped our beloved tree into bits. Let me take a moment here to remember Hojalito: we planted him in 2007 just after we bought the house. A 16 foot-tall, 2 1/2 inch caliper B&B Quercus phellos (willow oak), which we lovingly planted by hand, to grow and tower over our home and provide some much needed shade. But Hojalito quickly showed signs of iron chlorosis due to alkaline soil, and though we applied a chelated iron spray solution to his foliage, he never quite recovered and we decided to sacrifice him for our geothermal heat. So it goes.

Then the contractor #1 came in to rip out our fence and part of our neighbor’s (we have the kindest neighbor imaginable, by the way), and the backyard devastation was in full swing. A 30-ton drilling rig, taller than the house and quite noisy, spent 2 days drilling holes 200 feet into the earth (contractor #2). Something about the drilling: I didn’t really realize how messy it would be. It makes perfect sense: when you drill a hole in wood you get sawdust, so why would our backyard be any different. But neither Aaron nor I anticipated the limestone dust that would cover our entire backyard. As if our soil pH wasn’t high enough already! After that, contractor #3 came to trench the loops through the crawlspace and into our basement, and now our backyard is a muddy pit (hence the dog’s depression; we can’t let her out there unless we want muddy paw prints throughout the house). Hopefully contractor #4 will finish installing the ductwork soon, and then contractor #1 can come in and put our backyard back in order.

The drilling rig--too big to fit in a single frame!

Fully extended

Drilling action

The aftermath

Get Your Geothermal by 2016!

Kristin — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:33:06 +0000

As I mentioned last week, our central heat installation is dependent on this backyard renovation. Why, you might ask, does our HVAC have anything to do with the backyard? Well, let’s start at the beginning.

Our house has no ductwork and no central heat, and of course no air conditioning. You may think we’re crazy, but Aaron and I don’t really care for air conditioning, so we don’t mind not having that luxury. But the heating, we care about. Our current heating situation is four permanently-installed gas space heaters, and winter temperatures in our house never really get above 66 degrees. I’m not complaining about 66 degrees; 66 is vastly more comfortable than the 60 degrees before our attic insulation and the mid-50s before our magnetic interior storm windows. So 66 is tolerable. But still, it might be nice to approach 68, or maybe, if we really want to embrace our American energy-consuming heritage, a toasty 70!

One of our gas space heaters. Notice the tube out the back, where heat is pumped directly to the outdoors.

We’ve been weighing our central-heat options over the past three years, with our primary goals being comfort and efficiency. (Given how hot the vents from the gas space heaters to the outside become, I’d estimate that our current heating system is about 30% efficient.) A heat pump with a back-up furnace is the standard in most homes. The heat pump is quite efficient; the furnace is not. Our tree-hugging selves really want the maximum green-ness, which translates to the most energy efficient system possible. That system is geothermal heat.

Geothermal works in a manner similar to a heat pump, but it uses the constant temperature of the earth to exchange heat rather than the widely fluctuating temperature of the outside air, hence the increased efficiency. In order to access the stable earth temperature, we’ll have to hire a drilling company to drill wells in our backyard for the heat exchange coils.

This geothermal stuff ain’t cheap. It costs about twice as much as a standard heat pump and furnace system. The rule of thumb has been that you’ll make up the difference in cost in 7-8 years, but that’s a long time to wait to recover such a substantial investment. Previous tax credits for energy improvements limited the payout to $1500. HOWEVER, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 eliminated the cap on tax credits specifically for geothermal heating systems (and a couple other specifically called-out items, like solar panels). That means that homeowners who install a geothermal system before December 31, 2016 can receive 30% of the total cost back. With that tax credit, the difference in cost between the two systems can be made up in 3-4 years.

For us, geothermal is an obvious choice. It’s greener, and it will start saving us money in 3-4 years. Plus, it eliminates the need for a bulky, noisy heat pump/air-conditioning unit in the backyard. And as a bonus, a by-product of the geothermal air handler is hot water, so that’ll save us energy and money on hot water all winter long.

So now we’re back to that pesky part about tearing up our entire backyard. To get the enormous drilling rig into our backyard, we have to remove not only our fence, but part of our neighbor’s fence as well. (Our neighbor is absolutely the best and had no problem with us temporarily taking his fence down.) But of course removing our fence means putting in a new fence which means that whole historic approval process and… we’re still working on it. That, and we need to prepare our house for a retrofitting of duct work, which fortunately shouldn’t be too hard. But it’s definitely a long process.

Landscape progress (or lack thereof)

Kristin — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 20:35:53 +0000

As of our last post so many weeks ago, Aaron and I were preparing to go before our city’s historic preservation committee to seek approval for some major changes to our backyard landscape. We got dressed all professional-like and I even wore my “It’s-Okay,-I’m-A-Designer glasses” (to quote my friend Anna Schwinn, designer and bicycle heiress). The meeting went down something like this:

It's-Okay,-I'm-A-Designer glasses

All the projects under review were ordered from least-to-most contentious, with ours being second-to-last on the agenda. The only hearing scheduled after ours was deferred until the next meeting, so we were actually the last hearing scheduled to take place. Had we agreed with the staff-level suggestions, we could have left after only 20 minutes or so, but of course we did not agree completely, so we had to wait for all the other dissenters ahead of us to argue their cases. We sat through a 55-minute argument about whether or not to make a contractor rebuild a chimney that had been removed by a different contractor, as well as a couple other mildly interesting cases. Then, two hours after our arrival, we got to argue our case.

The only areas where we differed from the staff suggestions were the thickness of our wall (which we won) and our desire for decorative gravel on our parking space (which we lost on the grounds of gravel not permitted inside city limits, never mind that the history museum put down gravel in their planting beds and around their trees right in the middle of downtown only this past week. But I digress…) Overall, a success for our plans.

So our plans have been approved, but of course nothing has happened yet. We’re still bidding it out to contractors and waiting for quotes. And of course, the plan keeps changing. Since we were denied the beautiful gravel that I’d wanted, we’ve been searching for suitable semi-permeable alternatives to put down on the parking space, which of course will need to go back to the historic preservation folks for approval once we select a new material. That, and the prices for a concrete wall came back a little higher than we’d hoped (ah, naiveté), so we’re looking for alternatives for this as well. Our central heat installation is dependent on this backyard renovation, so we’re really hoping this gets underway before the temperatures drop much more.

Landscape Plans

Kristin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:43:24 +0000

Our jungle/backyard. It looks tame in this picture, since we ripped all the morning glories off the fence.

Our backyard is a jungle, with the most pervasive weeds imaginable and little to speak of other than our neglected vegetable patch and our highly chlorotic oak tree. We do have some prolific basil plants (basil must thrive on neglect), and two hardy ice plants from our wedding centerpieces, a rosemary, and a geranium are doing well. But everything else is weedy. The morning glories, which we thought were cute when we first moved in, have crept into the ~~lawn~~ weeds, the garden, all over the fence. When you pull one out of the ground, two sprout back in its place. And our chain link fence, ugly in its own right, goes the extra step toward ghetto by having the tops of the wires pointed up, barbed-wire style. You can imagine my embarrassment when telling someone I have a degree in horticulture.

Our ghetto fence, with sharp things on top!

Yes, our backyard is a jungle, point established. For the last three years I’ve been dying to remedy this, and the day has finally arrived! Our original plan called for replacing our ghetto fence with a retaining wall and wooden fence above it. The retaining wall is necessary to level up the backyard (it currently slopes 18 inches over three feet just before the chain-link fence and washes soil and debris out onto the sidewalk). We also originally planned for a sunken parking space at sidewalk level which would serve as patio space most of the time, and as a parking space only when street parking is unavailable. I was really going for the level change to make the backyard space feel larger and to make the car less visible when it’s parked there. The idea was that the retaining wall around the parking space would serve as a seat-wall, and we could have a fire pit down there and have a nice little space.

We have to conform to a rigorous set of design guidelines due to our historic home and its location. Since we’re trying to add a feature that currently does not exist (the retaining wall), we’ll have to go before our city’s board of historic preservation in a town-hall style meeting to get approval. We submitted our plan and met with a helpful member of the historic preservation committee, then tweaked our design a little bit.

After our design seemed acceptable in terms of historic preservation, we met with a traffic engineer (also from the city) to make sure our sight triangles were clear and our curb cut wouldn’t impede traffic flow or safety (safety is so BORING!). The traffic engineer was concerned about our gate blocking the sidewalk, which I thought was ludicrous because people park on our sidewalk whenever there is an event downtown and they never get parking tickets. But I held my tongue. I sound ungrateful, so I must point out that this person was also very helpful and gave us some good advice.

So after the safety meeting, we had to move our gate and fence back to accommodate the sight triangles, which meant changing the design yet again and resubmitting it to the historic preservation committee. Since we are giving up four more feet of lawn space (our yard is only 30 feet wide), the sunken driveway was out. We could have kept it, but I didn’t like how far it jutted into the yard at this point. The proportion was all wrong. On the plus side, the non-sunken parking space is more affordable, as less excavation is needed.

This entire process has taken about two months, and we’re still not finished. We have been given a meeting date of September 8th, which means that one week from today we will be standing before the board of historic preservation. This panel of architects and historic preservation experts will decide if our design is complimentary to the surrounding neighborhood, and will ultimately decide the fate of our backyard. Fingers crossed!

The plan for our backyard, created in Google SketchUp

Designing the Office/Guestroom

Kristin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:51:29 +0000

We’ve written before about the summer social season and its detrimental impact on our available time for housework. And while Aaron and I have been busy this summer, that is likely nothing compared to this fall, when I return to school full time. Classes start tomorrow, in fact, and with this deadline looming, Aaron and I have been working toward fashioning the small room at the top of the stairs into a home-office. The goal (it was Aaron’s brilliant idea, though I would love to take credit) is for me to have a place to study free of distractions. Come to think of it, I think Aaron just wants the TV and internet to himself.

Anyway, what this all comes down to is a scramble to actually finish a room, the first in our house! I’m not going to lie: I’m pretty excited about this.

The Scenario:

The room in question is small, about 9 ft x 7 ft, with a southwest facing window (resulting in hot hot sunlight streaming in, with no air conditioning). It currently houses the twin-size guest bed. There really isn’t another good room for this guest bed at the moment, so the room will have to serve the dual purpose of study area and guestroom. There are also plaster walls, one of which is wavy and uneven, with a few spots needing repair, and the other three of which are in good condition and have never been painted.

The Solution:

This awesome print, by Shand Kydd, appears more chartreuse and less yellow in reality

The wavy wall will probably do best with wallpaper to hide its unevenness, so that’s where our search began. I had two constraints in regards to wallpaper: (1) green and (2) gaudy. In general, I like wallpaper to be loud. I want the walls to say, “hey, this is wallpaper, and don’t you forget it!” For this particular room, I wanted the color scheme to be green, which will feel nice and calming during all-night study sessions. I know this image looks very yellow, but the wallpaper is a delightful chartreuse-green in real life. Plus, I think this image doesn’t do the print justice: the peacocks are about 21″ tall.

Once the wallpaper comes in at my local wallpaper supply store, I’ll match the lighter teal from the leaves/peacock tail for the paint color for the other three walls. I think one wall will suffice for a pattern this bold, don’t you think?

Additionally, the bed will be on the 7 ft wall, and I’m making it into a daybed of sorts with lots of pillows in fuchsia, magenta, teal, chartreuse and beige. The curtains will also be in some fabric to match the pillows. I’m hoping these will block some of that hot summer afternoon sun. Plus Aaron has been up in the hot attic running wiring for my new ceiling fan (he’s my favorite husband!), so it should be nice and cool in there. The coverlet for the bed is white, as is my desk and the trim around the door and window.

I had originally planned on ordering some anatomical line drawings like this one, but that was before I found the peacock. Now I’m not sure…

So I realize that classes start tomorrow, and that my space isn’t quite done yet. But cut us some slack! We’ve been trying to fit in as much of the summer social season as possible before school starts. I’ll update with the finished product, plus work-in-progress pictures, soon.

How to destroy a perfectly good living space

Kristin — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:48:29 +0000

In an effort to speed up our progress, we decided to cut a hole in our bedroom wall. This has long been a part of the plan, and we were pretty tired of working on things like plumbing and framing and wiring, so it seemed like a good time to completely undo all of the organization and arranging we had done to make our place habitable. Our real goal here was to motivate ourselves by making our living space uncomfortable. It had become too pleasant in our house, and we’d been developing a nasty TV habit in the evenings when we should have been working. Over the course of a weekend, we moved everything out of the bedroom and into our living room.

The entire contents of our bedroom, laid on our living room furniture

With the bedroom cleared, it was time to cut the hole in the wall. This hole will eventually function as the doorway to our master bath. It was already a window in the brick, and we’d removed a few courses of brick in order to make a doorway. Now we just needed to cut a hole through the plaster wall.

the new door

We used a diamond blade on a circular saw, similar to the blade we used to cut concrete. It worked like a charm, and the hole was cut, straight edges and all. It only took about 15 minutes. The hardest part was moving all that stuff out of the bedroom, and then trying to figure out what to do with it afterward.

Our living room is still pretty much unusable, but at least now we have a doorway connecting our bedroom directly to the unfinished, uninsulated part of the house. Soon it will be time to select finish surfaces, which is a whole other scary avenue that we haven’t begun to walk yet.

The Mini Cooper is more practical than one might think…

Kristin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 22:27:12 +0000

Aaron drives a Mini Cooper, which may not sound like the embodiment of practicality for two people renovating a home, what with frequent trips to the hardware store for 10 ft lengths of pipe and dimensional lumber and all that. And while my car is slightly larger and, I must admit, has a larger capacity in terms of what will fit in the hatchback, Aaron’s car is by far the more pragmatic simply by virtue of its sunroof.

Aaron and John after a productive trip to the hardware store

As you can see, the Mini has been great for hauling various materials to our jobsite, especially CPVC for our recent plumbing job (which I lamented earlier; however, a new study published in Chemical Research in Toxicology details a possible link between copper intake and Alzheimer’s disease and suggests that adults over 50 avoid drinking water from copper plumbing. So while I may eventually get cancer from our CPVC, I’ll be blissfully aware of all the horrible details as the cancer progresses.)

In more upbeat news, we finished the plumbing for and framed in the water closet of our master bathroom! On the left there will be the shower stall, and on the right will be the toilet. The sinks will be on the other side of that window (soon to be doorway). And all the utilities, including duct work and electricity, will go in the sloped part of the ceiling above the bathroom, which will have a flat ceiling.

Framing for the bathroom

PVC Plumbing and Its As-Yet-Undetermined Effects on My Future Fertility

Kristin — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 21:40:49 +0000

As we’ve previously mentioned, the busy summer season is upon us, with weekends consumed by weddings, free festivals, and travelling. Still, we’ve managed to fit in a little work here and there over the past few weeks. We wrote before about our decision to go with PVC plumbing over copper, and overall it’s been a good decision.

It was a tough one to make, initially. My fear of plastics and toxic chemicals inclined me to prefer copper plumbing, but we weren’t too excited about soldering all those pipes. It’s a really slow process, copper plumbing. And after some internet research (including no mention of PVC vs. copper plumbing in my light research on LEED certification; AND the consumer-protection-conscious state of California’s 2007 decision to give PVC plumbing the go-ahead), we decided it might not actually be that bad for us. And hey, we’re all going to get cancer in America anyway, so might as well not sweat the PVC.

So we’ve run some supply lines using CPVC (chlorinated polyvinyl chloride, the type of PVC approved for drinking water), and I must admit the installation was quick and easy. The only problem is the primer and PVC cement–those fumes are noxious! I found myself getting sleepy and taking naps in the afternoons when we worked on the plumbing, something very out of character for me. And despite letting the pipes dry for 2 hours before turning the water back on, our water has smelled and tasted like PVC cement for 2 weeks. What does PVC cement taste like? Like a tumor growing on my ovaries, that’s what. But the smell and taste are fading, and even when they were bad, the water seemed okay after we let it run for about 45 seconds.