Using what you've got

Since we've had such great weather which gave us so much time before we could plant, we decided to build stepping pads from our patio into the garden.  We used leftover bricks from resetting the patio and built frames out of the fence John kicked down.

Yes, we know that wood frames buried in the ground will eventually rot, but the soil from the garden should be holding the bricks in place by then.  So we're good.

John in action!

Also, since we've had such great weather we made our kids come outside and help us build the stepping pads to the garden.  

But first the answer to the question:  "Why build stepping pads from your patio to the garden?"

Answer:  Because we took the railroad ties out of the new! improved!! patio, we added about 4 feet to the garden.  I saw 2 problems with this:

1.  We did not need 4 extra feet of garden.  We never imagined that we would have this much space and it is overwhelming, not to mention that I don't think the neighbor (Hi Linda!) is too happy about her view of vegetables.  I suspect she was hoping for some lovely flowers...  so we were trying to minimize the amount of unruly veggie plants and not let ourselves get to crazy with overplanting.  We are taking it easy this first year to see how it goes...

2.  On those rainy days when you just have to have a tomato/pepper/herbs, we thought it would be nice to have a dry path from the house to the tomato/pepper/herbs without having to get our feet muddy.

So there.

We decided that 3 pads would serve our purposes nicely and use the leftover bricks perfectly.  John measured how big the frame should be so we wouldn't have to cut any bricks and he and Sam went to town dismantling the discarded fence to harvest a few good pieces to build the frames for the bricks.

Don't let this fool you, Sam did most of the nailing.
I just happened to take the picture when Will was working.

Sorry Sam.

Look how excited they are!   It's infectious isn't it??  Not even 3 seconds after Will nailed the frame and I took the picture, they both were saying "Are we done?"  Gah.  These apples are falling pretty far from the tree aren't they?  No we are NOT done.

Deciding on the layout.  I don't think there is anything worse than getting done with a project
and noticing that it is not quite even on one side.

So worth it.

Next was the super exciting layout phase.  This is where we set them down, step back and move any/all of them fractions of inches before we decide we like where they are and pick them up to level them.

So, when the layout was finally right we picked up the frames (which for some reason pissed off the kids - I think because we spent a lot of time getting them just right, or maybe they thought they were closer to being done and free from landscaping hell) and made sure that the top of the bricks were level with the top of the patio so it would be a seamless transition from patio to garden.  

Don't know why I took pictures from 2 angles, but...

...you're welcome. 

Now all we had to do was recreate the same process as laying the patio using the same basketweave pattern and finish them off with sand in the gaps between bricks.  

This really took about an hour from start to finish, but you'd think that we had worked those kids since dawn.  At this point, John and I were more than happy to tell the kids they were free to do as they pleased.  And then they disappeared for the next few hours until they got hungry.  Quality parenting.

Here they are done and ready for action.

We also turned over the existing dirt and added some compost.
Now we wait until we can plant some veg and herbs! 

Cost breakdown:  $0

The cost to our kids' psyches from this hour of torture is yet to be measured, but I know they were both proud when they saw the finished product and knew they had built a part of our garden that would last a long, long time.  

Did I ever tell you about the patio?

Whoops.  We spent a bunch of time resetting our patio recently.

Here is what it looked like on moving day.

I swear it's underneath the crabgrass - do you see the bricks?? 

Here is another (worse) angle.
It's sloping TOWARD the foundation.

So yeah, we spent a ton of time rebuilding a retaining wall and then moved on to the patio.  It took a little more time than we thought, but since we can't plant anything in late March/early April, we had the benefit of awesome weather and nothing else to do but rebuild stuff.

I've forgotten the order of operations, but it goes something like this...

1.  Pick up bricks and restack them near where you're going to reset the patio.  Duh.

2.  Level the new bed for the bricks.  We used a gravel/stone mixture the guy at the landscaping place told us to.

3.  Reset the bricks.  We used a basketweave pattern because that is what was there before and since we removed the railroad ties from within the patio, we didn't want to take the chance that we'd run out of bricks.  It was a close call anyway, but we made it with a few to spare :)

That's how many bricks we had left.  

Close up of the pattern

We used spikes from the railroad ties we removed
 to keep our level line for laying the brick.

Note about keeping the lines straight.  We totally spaced this part.  We thought it would be awesome to have it ready to go and then have the kids come out and help lay the bricks.  We also thought this would take about an hour.  Wrong on both counts.  What happened is this.

it was 1000 degrees outside that morning

it was 1/2 hour before lunchtime

the bricks are not in any way, shape, or form a uniform size

Here is a recipe for disaster - put the factors above together and you get a cranky family trying to finish something as fast as possible so they can go inside and cool off and eat.  

Also you get a really crooked line for your patio.

So, we went inside and ate, the kids got busy doing something else, and John and I went outside and realized that we needed to pull up the 2 or 3 rows we already set and start over.  So we did.

We also realized that we needed to have some sort of guide for keeping the lines even.  We grabbed some spikes we kept from removing the railroad ties (they are 3 feet long BTW, you haven't lived until you spend a day prying those out of 30 year old rotted wood) and strung some twine for our line.  

Don't think we are MENSA material here, I'm pretty sure that is what you are supposed to do, we just thought we were too talented and didn't need the extra guidance.  Chumps.

Moving on...

After you've spent several hours - the charming rustic bricks that aren't the same size make for a lot of trial and error in setting them - you are ready for the next step...

4. Sweep sand into the gaps.  Repeat (and repeat) as necessary.  We didn't use the polymeric sand, just regular old sand.  This takes some patience since the sand needs to settle within the cracks.  We spent a little time each evening for a couple of nights sweeping sand into the gaps that kept reappearing, and then had a terrific thunderstorm to really pack the sand in between the gaps before it looked perfect.

Here are some photos...

BEFORE:

I still can't believe we bought this...

We didn't realize until we were ready to reset the patio,
but the pattern of the railroad ties were
a couple ties short of a swastika...

Creepy.

And AFTER:

Keepin' it real.  That is the low rent version of a step.
Ignore it, just look at the lovely patio with sand in between the bricks :)

Here is what we did with the extra bricks.
Details to follow later, this post is long enough.

Again, just look at the finished product :)

And a dramatic before and after for you:

Before:

After:

That is the EXACT SAME SPOT in the backyard.  EXACT! SAME! SPOT!  Sorry for the shouting,  but it's pretty damn exciting.

OK, long enough post.  I'll do another one soon about how we made the kids build the brick pads for stepping into the garden.  It's a good one. 

Since I'm using the blog to document transformations, I'm going to do a run down of costs.

Bricks:  $0 (we used what we had)

Gravel/sand:  $70

Pizza/beer: $30

So that's about right - $100.  Not too shabby.