Patio

A couple of years ago a friend asked me to sort his patio for him.   This job should have been a nice simple one, the existing crazy paving had been lifted by some rogue tree roots, so the job was to lift the paving, dig out the roots (the tree had already been dealt with by tree surgeons) and then re-lay the paving.

Of course nothing is ever as simple as it sounds, the first problem was fitting the paving back together, the second was when the builders merchant forgot to deliver my sand, and then sent it round lose on a tipper instead of in bags, which meant I then had half a tonne of sand left over which I had to clear up before the BBQ which was my dead line.

I know some of these pictures are not of good quality but they do show the process, and the chaos while the job is being done.

I did make one important change to the design, the original paving went right up to the wall of the house, amongst other things tis really mucked up the drainage, and partially blocked off a couple of air bricks.   Instead of this I put a "French Drain" all around, this is a small trench filled in with pea shingle, as well as helping the drainage I rather like the way these look, and have been using them ever since.