The Patio and the Bicycle Brigade

As summer progresses, I’ve been able to accomplish lots that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. For instance, several years ago I bought two pallets of landscaping tiles. Each is 14 × 14 inches, and a little more than an inch thick. I didn’t have any idea then why they were marked down to about a dollar apiece, but now I think I understand. (1)  The tiles were not well fired in the kiln, and they are pretty easy to break. (2) No one around here markets 14- by 14-inch tiles any more, at least that I can find.
I’ve resorted to using a concrete cement to repair the tiles I’ve broken. (Mary isn’t thrilled with the sliver-gray color of the patches, but that can be fixed with some concrete paint, which I’m not quite ready to buy.)
I worked for many days on the patio. It’s enclosed in a box of pressure-treated two-inch lumber, and I drove stakes, T posts, and several other sharp-pointed objects into the ground outside the box to keep things in place.
I tried to leave about 3/8 of an inch between two tiles, but that was not always a precise accomplishment. Nevertheless, I filled the cracks among the tiles with polymerized (polymeric) joint seal sand, sprayed water on it, and continued with the project.
To backtrack a bit, I prepared the area by roto-tilling the lawn (what was left of it, after years of excavation by our friendly local gray squirrels). Then I hauled four tons of torpedo sand in our little style-side Ford Ranger pickup, and delivered it shovel by shovel to where I wanted it.
This large expanse of sand quickly became an attractive nuisance, and I had to repeatedly shoo off some little neighbor boys. I also had to relevel the sand frequently, and once when I was smoothing the surface with a garden rake, I dug up a number of toy trucks and other playthings. There may well be toys still buried under the patio. I don’t know for sure.
The other unexpected visitors to this very large sandbox were the neighbors’ cats. I had to point that out to the neighbor boys to finally get them to cease and desist in their excavations, so the cats proved a blessing in the end, so to speak.
Once the 4 tons of sand were in place and tamped down wet, I laid the tiles over that, and finished off with the joint sealing sand, as I mentioned in an earlier paragraph of this rambling blog. That left the patio perched up higher than the surrounding yard, which had been a little too low to my liking, in any case.
I then hauled in two cubic yards of topsoil, which I again distributed with a shovel from the back of the Ranger. I laid 200 linear feet of sod around the patio, so it looks pretty nice. Once I found out how inexpensive sod was, I was amazed that I hadn’t used sod before. The Pedigo Sod Farm, out on Staley Road, is a family-run business that really excels at their work. They sold me my first 100 feet of sod for a little over $36, a bargain, so far as I’m concerned.
The finished area was ready for our United Marriage Encounter Core group picnic on Saturday, with some help from my Bicycle Brigade lads.

Part of the Garden Hills Bicycle Brigade

 The finished patio, replete with seating for 20 adults, looks like this:

One of my other projects was to install some rain barrels to catch the precious water running off down the street. I got one up (I have two more barrels to install), but the project was beset with technical difficulties.
First I bought the barrels, of course, and I also got one for free from my little brother Ric, with only a little begging. I brainstormed for a while about the best way to build a platform to hold a rain barrel. Mary told me about some so-called deck tiles at Menards. These are 22-inch square sections of pressure-treated decking, with a frame of 2 by 6 pressure-treated wood underneath. I drilled four holes in the bottom of the platform, one in each corner.
For supports, I bought four 24-inch lengths of  1-inch galvanized pipe at Rural Kind, drove the pipes into the ground, and set the platform on the pipes. I then releveled the platform.
Alas. One overnight 1-inch rain filled the 220-liter barrel to overflowing. Gee, I should have talked to an engineer. (Let’s see, that’s 58.12 gallons at 8.35 lbs per gallon.) I now have 485.302 lbs of water (plus the weight of the barrel) on my poorly engineered platform. When we came home from a friend’s house at about 9:30 last night, the entire device was listing dangerously to starboard.
I did a quick fix with a 2 by 8 length of lumber and an 8-pound sledge hammer, just driving the high side of the platform (and thus the supporting pipe) downward, apologizing afterward to the ladies across the street, who were having a little deck party. This morning I’ll have to relevel the platform again.
I guess the worst-case scenario, short of a 400-lb. barrel full of rainwater rolling down the yard is that, eventually, the platform will be level with the ground.

In other project news, the purchase of a high-efficiency (five-foot tall) air conditioning unit and a high-efficiency furnace, mysteriously led to a major remodeling of our hallway (and beyond).

An Air Conditioner as Tall as My Wife

"Nothing Runs like a Trane"

 

Let me explain: The new furnace needed a 180-degree change in orientation from the old furnace, which was almost impossible to service because it faced the water heater. That called for a hole in a wall in the hallway. (By the way, wives do not like holes in hallway walls, drywall and plaster dust, storage and furnace areas that are open to public view. . . . But I digress.)
The new hole in the wall now has a new door in the hall, as shown in the previous and following pictures. The former very large service access opening for the furnace and hot water heater now has its own 24-inch door. The bathroom has a new door. The spare bedroom has a new door. The closet door has several new coats of white paint, and is about to receive its very own mirror, and there’s lots of new drywall to spackle and paint.

Furnace, closet, water heater, bathroom, and spare bedroom doors, along with plenty of new drywall.
Now we’re getting new hardwood flooring in the hallway, living room, and kitchen. How did buying energy-efficient heating and air conditioning equipment lead to this?
In other news, I really do still plan to walk across Illinois in September. My good friend (and excellent artist), Duane Gillogly, who illustrates my East of 39 cartoon series, designed a nice logo for the walk, which I’m displaying here.