The patio is coming along quite nicely. Today, I finished going through all the used bricks that still had mortar on them. It was quite a chore but I got all the mortar knocked off of all of them. I wound up with a nicely sized stack when I was done. I didn't figure that a lot of the bricks would be useable, but almost all of them were.
I started laying some of them, but I knew that I would be limited in what I could do because I only had a very small pile of sand left with which to work. I will go back to American Landscape and Quarry supply on Monday and get another half bucket of sand. That should be about the right amount to get the remainder done.
While I was laying bricks, Jodi was spreading the brown sand over the top of the bricks that have been down for a while. We have been waiting on a good rain to come and cement down the lime sand that I have been using as a base. The lime sand is especially good for this because it gets pretty hard and compacted rather easily. We didn't really want their to be white sand in between the bricks, but we knew that the first good rain would compact everything that had already been laid and allow new room for a surface layer.
I can't help but just stand and stare at it. One of the downsides of performing a home improvement project is that since you're in the thick of it throughout every step, you kind of miss the "wow" factor. It's like not really noticing how fast your children are growing because you see them everyday.
But, as you can see from this photo, we are dangerously close to being done. The perspective doesn't really show it, but it is probably more than 3/4 of the way complete.
It cracks me up how long we have been planning all of this outdoor space. It was December of 2008 when I uploaded this
Google Sketchup 3D rendering of our plans. And, even before I made this Sketchup drawing, we had discussed, planned, and drawn out a rough layout of what you basically see here. So, for at least 6 years, we've had this pictured in our mind's eye. In that regard, it's nothing short of amazing to see that we have actually done it and accomplished what we dreampt up so long ago.
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