So close

This weekend was all about the walkway. I spent friday cleaning up and re-checking the grading on the walkway. I also got all of the sand down and screed. It was a full day of hand-tamping, shoveling, and screeding. BUT, when I went to bed, things were in great shape to start laying the pavers Saturday.

















Look at the difference between pulling the screed poles up (on the left) and sliding them out (on the right). Less damage and easier to fill the holes.

I got pretty good at repairing the screed pole holes using a spade and bucket of sand. Here was my masterpiece Friday evening.
















I woke up Saturday morning pumped and ready to start laying pavers in my nice sand only to find that evil forces had been at work overnight



There was some sort of animal wrestling match in my clean sand. I was angry. We have some squirrels around and more rabbits than you could eat in a sitting. But this almost seemed deliberate. I soon found the smoking gun....
















It didn't take much googling to confirm my suspicions that the nighttime vandal was a raccoon. Then, the confusing thing was that there were tracks from a differenet animal. I realized they were cat prints. But, short of a fight or some sort of twisted midnight raccoon-kitty square dance on my sand, why the two animals?

I think I figured out what happened. The raccoon went snooping around my walkway (they are "curious" you know). Then later, a cat went sniffing around the raccoon droppings, which I learned (the hard way) look an awful lot like acorns.

By the time the investigation had ended, my temper had cooled and I put my sandworking skills back to work. It took about 20 minutes to fix (about a half as long as the investigation).

By Saturday evening, I had many of the pavers down. I ended up using a border of 1 6x9 then 2 6x6 because I was (correctly it turns out) afraid I wouldn't have enough 6x9 pavers. I worked hard to make sure that the wall was parallel with the house. Check out the lines in this picture (and my sweet new laser level)















I rented a brick saw friday afternoon. I was REALLY glad I didnt even try to use just a chissle. I had a lot of cutting to do (but the saw sat idle until Sunday morning $110 down the tubes). Sunday was of course Father's day, so I goofed off a little, but spend several hours on the walkway. Mostly, I cut all of the pieces along the edge. Unfortunately, I had to run off to dinner with the fam about an hour shy of being done. But, Sunday evening, here's where I am:




















What's left? That little sliver of pavers along the driveway (look at some of the slivers in the pictures above). I also need to cut the pavers along the front (along the PVC pipe) and lock them in with a border.



soooo close...