So, this summer has been one of many projects and since Jut and I are to cheep to pay others to do the work we end up poring our sweat, tears and sometimes blood into each job. To start the summer we (and many wonderful family and friends) put a sprinkler system in the front yard. As they dug the trenches for that project, they also put in electrical conduit to put lights on our garage (why the builder didn't put lights on the garage we don't know) and a lamp post by the driveway. This project seemed pretty straight forward but as many of you know those are the kind of projects that give you the most trouble. The goal was to have the front porch light, two garage door lights and the lamp post all run off one switch that was already running the front porch light. To accomplish this required digging under the foundation, running about 100 ft of electrical wire through conduit, several hours under the house attaching wire to and through the floor joists, drilling several holes into the cement board siding and pouring a cement pad for the lamp post. Luckily we have a wonderful friend who knows electrical and kept Jut from violating code, blowing himself up and going insane. (thanks again BG) Anyway after long last (and many choice words) our lights look wonderful.
The next project was to install a patio in our back yard that would connect two small cement patios. This again seemed quite straight forward but little did we know that our choice of flag stone would put quite the kink in the project. As I am sure most of you know flag stone in neither flat or of equal thickness from one piece to the next, a fact which makes leveling your project a little more complicated than it would be if you where just using cement pavers. We did our home work and we were determined to do the job correctly so we followed the plans laid out in the literature we read and after digging out the grass and dirt, leveling the ground, putting down 4 yards of 3/4 minus gravel, leveling the gravel and then compacting the gravel we were ready for sand and flag stone. As we began to level out the first section of sand we quickly learned that each stone would require a different depth of sand and the depth of sand required for each stone would often change from one end of the stone to the other. This made leveling an entire area of sand at one time pointless and it made the job of putting this huge rock puzzle together a little more complicated and much more time consuming. But as you can see from the results it turned out great. We spent most of Saturday finishing this project and even though my 7 1/2 month pregnant body is very sore I can say it was worth it.
After we put down the gravel and some of the almost4 tons of flagstone.
The finished product!!
One last thing before I post this "book". I know that Jut gets tired of doing these projects and someday he will be so glad when he can look around our home and not have a huge project starring him in the face saying "work on me". But I want him to know that I am so proud of the work he does and the patience he has with his detail oriented, perfectionist and often crazy wife. He has conquered so many projects that he had no idea how to finish when he started and he is always patient when I put my two cents in. Thank you babe, I love you.
