Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Patio Progress - Part 3

My last post showed you progress on our retaining wall construction and backfill for our patio.  Last weekend we also tackled more steps on our patio to-do list.

1.  We finished our excavating/backfill process, which basically meant taking dirt from the right side of the yard (as you see it in the pic below) and placing it to the right of the wall.  You can see at the planting bed (where Grouper is standing) how the yard sloped before.  We placed the wall where the largest slope occurred and flattened it out where the patio was going.  We then checked to see how level the ground was - we did want some slope to the patio for drainage, but didn't want anything drastic.

2.  Once the yard seemed somewhat level, we did some Redneck compacting - used a good ole F-150 to make sure our ground was compacted well.  This ensures any settling of the patio is kept to a minimum.  

3.  Then it was time to place around 2" of 21A stone for our base course.  21A stone is pretty much self compacting and provides a foundation for the patio.  It took us 2 tons of stone that we hand shoveled and placed from out of the back of the truck, which = sore arms.  We kept checking how level our patio was.  

4.  We also worked on the stairs up to the patio.  

5.  Headed to Home Depot to order our pavers and ... bought a Grill!  Of course we tried our new grill out and made cheeseburgers that night, yum :)  





 So, our pavers were scheduled for delivery today, Wednesday.  Home Depot admitted that their delivery service is sub-par.  But 4 pallets of pavers that could only be transported by an F-150 half a pallet a time was just not going to work.  We were supposed to get a call 1 hour ahead of the delivery time.  What really happened today ... I got a call from a Bulgarian driver whose English was rough 10 minutes before the delivery.  Strike 1.  He asked if the address was correct; it wasn't, it was our old address!  Strike 2.  I corrected him and gave him our new address.  He went to put it in his GPS, but kept confusing a 'T' with a 'P'.  He said he couldn't find the address, but was going to deliver it anyways.  What?  I asked quite frankly 'how can you deliver something to an address you don't know'. His response 'that's my job, I figure out where to deliver things'.  Huh?  Strike 3.  Panicked, I hopped in my car and headed home to make sure our delivery made it safe and sound.  I got a call about 5 minutes into the trip home from his boss.  He confirmed that our road with a 'T' existed.  I was already on my way so decided to make sure this delivery really happened.  I got home right when he was about to pack up and leave.  But wait a minute ... it was the wrong material!  It was 1.5 pallets 0.5 of it retaining wall pavers and 1 pallet of brick sized pavers.  Not even close to what we ordered  - which was 4 pallets of 1 type of 6"x12" pavers.  Strike 4, shouldn't they already be out?  Anyways, I got it all straightened out with Home Depot and we should be receiving the correct material tomorrow.  Fingers crossed.


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