And the fun keeps on coming

The upstairs painting is done!!! I did a happy dance this morning when we confirmed the doors were finished. We need to remove the tiny bits of paint on the doorknobs and rehang them - that's it! I intend to take a short break from painting before tackling the back hall. Eventually - but before we need them on again - the living and dining room radiators need doing, too. They look pretty good, but when we had the rooms done a few years ago, the walls got a bit darker, so the radiators are too light. Once they're cleaned, they don't take long to paint. That's the story of painting - prep is everything and often the biggest job.

Mike and Co. made progress on the patio yesterday, but all did not run smoothly. The clay is so saturated that the compactor couldn't compact it! It was kind of like walking on jello. The edges and walkway went just fine, as the dingo didn't have to turn there. The turning was what really caused issues. I gather the dingo would dig itself down about 6" in the muck every time it turned. So Mike came back today with far more powerful compactor and tells us it's working much better! The walkway needs only one more layer of base before getting sand and the steppingstones, the sod has been cleared where we will plant, and we have pavers stacked and ready to go. But of course that's not all... Over the size of our patio (about 15 feet), you need 3" of slope to ensure proper drainage. OK - makes sense. And ours has exactly 3" of slope from the shape of our yard. Happy news, right? Not so fast - our yard slopes 3" the wrong direction. It slopes toward the house, instead of away. Sigh. Of course. So they have to build up the yard 6" on the side closest to the house. Mike proposed digging up the lilies of the valley that live right behind this area, adding dirt and putting the lilies back in. If any of you have lilies of the valley, you know how intertwined their roots get. Digging them up might make moving the clay look easy! I thought about putting a small curved retaining wall along that edge instead, with broader stones on top. This would add to our seating on the patio - it's not that big in the first place, and we don't want to fill it up with a bunch of chairs we won't use often in the second place. I mean, we can have more than the four we got, but we don't want 8 or 10 just taking up room! Although maybe we'll entertain more now that we'll have a better space... So Mike and Joe thought about it, and both liked the idea better the longer they thought about it. We'll see - we're a day or so away from that decision yet. Joe worried that folks wouldn't be able to see the lilies anymore, but I think you need to be able to smell them far more than see them. On the plus side of all this, building the dirt up means the pavers Mike will install around the perimeter of the shed (to cover the opening underneath so no critters take up residence) will pretty much cover the metal base on the two most visible sides. I like that - the metal's not so attractive and hiding it is good.

Update: Joe and Mike spent an hour arranging stones for the path. They came up with this. It looks great! Look closely. The third stone has a distinct point - which they placed to draw your eye outward. It reminds me of Minnesota. They reversed this at the last stone, with the point pointing in.


They will place the stone on the outside of the path just at the edge of the patio. I'm told the compacting is moving - slowly.