Making Lemonade
Start with four fresh lemons…
What is it with stupid, bone headed woodworking mistakes? I’m still making them after a lifetime of constructing things out of wood. The latest gaff is on four doors I am making for the cabinet friend Harry and I built last fall for shop tool storage.
The four doors I’m building are made from five pieces of wood. Four pieces form the frame of each door which holds a panel in the center of the frame. On one side of each door two shallow hinge mortises are cut in advance of the assembly of the frames, making it easier to cut the mortises. The easiest way to cut hinge mortises on the edge of a board is to clamp all the boards together and route across all the boards at once.
Instead of just clamping up just half of the door frame side pieces (because any moron knows you don’t need hinges on both sides of the door), I routed all eight side pieces as shown below.
___________________________________
The door frame pieces were cut narrow enough that if I sawed off the superfluous mortises there would be large gaps where the doors meets the frame. If I left the mortises on the door frame I would get to re-live the shame of this mistake every time I got a tool out of the cabinet. I was reluctant to saw off the mortises and glue a thin piece of wood back to each door to fill the gap because it would look like I glued a thin piece of wood to fill the gap. Starting over was not an option because I had no more straight-grained wood to make door frames.
So what does a guy with a whole lemon orchard in his back yard do? Well, I was also still undecided on what kind of door pulls to use and that got me to thinking. How could I cut off the hinge mortises and create door pulls at the same time? If I was going to add wood to cover up my error and create a door pull I didn’t want it to look like a mistake. I picked walnut as the door pull wood to contrast with the pine of the cabinet. Here is what I came up with.
______________________________________
If you notice how well the cabinet matches the floor it’s because its made out of left over flooring. Come to think of it, I guess the whole cabinet is one big glass of lemonade since it is the result of my incorrect estimate of the amount of flooring I needed.
I’m liking what the walnut door pulls are doing to the overall design of the cabinet by contrasting with all that pine. As I finish the trim around the top of the cabinet I am going to try to work in some more walnut accents to make those door pulls look intentional.
____________________________________
Last fall I attended Woodworking In America conference and got caught up in competing in their Hand Tool Olympics. I did so poorly in the handsaw ripping event that I quit the olympics after participating in only three of six events. A few days later I was surprised to read my name as a winner of the handsaw cross-cut event on the sponsoring magazine’s website.
After waiting several months for my classic, tuned up Disston cross-cut saw prize from contest sponsor and handsaw guru Ron Herman, it was finally sent to our North Carolina address where it languished in a box the rest of the winter waiting for my spring arrival.
I was not an athlete as a kid, not even close. Being raised in an era that predated participation trophies, my lifetime trophy shelf has been empty until recently. Now I have this sweet cutting cross-cut saw to go with my Veritas bevel-up joiner plane I won in Chicago three years earlier in a similar Hand Tool Olympics. Proving lightning does strike twice.
Back in North Carolina
We’ve been in North Carolina now for a couple of busy weeks. Other than a few limbs that blew down here and there on the lot and three mice in the bucket trap, the cabin and shop made it through the winter in fine fettle. After vacuuming the cobwebs, helping make the beds and sweeping the porches I started getting some sweet shop time. But it has not been all work and no play, as it never is for me. There has been time for biking, hiking, a trip to Atlanta to see family, finish the grandkids swing set and bring Truett and Jack back to the mountain for a few exciting days at the cabin with Papa and Mimi!
____________________________________
When you last saw the swing set there was only plywood decking on the roof, no bracing in the gable ends and a wide opening in the octagon front window for kids to easily exit from. Before I started adding the final touches I got to see our four-year old grandson Truett sitting 14′ above the ground in the triangle formed by the gable end. Let’s just say I didn’t need any additional motivation to finish the swing set.
___________________________________
One of the days our grandsons were with us was cold and rainy. After a morning cooped up in the cabin playing with Hotwheels and making play dough, the boys needed some shop time. Jack missed the paper on one of his drawings and left me with a hieroglyphic on the floor I’ll enjoy in the months to come. We also sawed a little bit with a handsaw, bored with a brace and planed a board. The next day Truett asked me if we could play with the airplane again. At first I told him we didn’t have an airplane, but then figured out he wanted to use the hand plane again. That made me a happy Papa.
_________________________________________
One of my first projects this spring will be to build a traditional workbench. In the 18th century French cabinetmaker and writer Andre Roubo completed masterwork volumes on woodworking called Description Des Arts Et Mettiers. In his books Roubo illustrates a workbench that is simple in construction with a thick slab top and massive legs that was in use in the 18th century and still relevant for today’s woodworkers. While I don’t read French and could not afford a copy of Mr. Roubo’s rare tomes, I have the benefit of author Christopher Schwarz’s modern interpretation of the Roubo bench in his book The Workbench Design Book.
A search for suitable wood for the workbench led me to Mountain Sawyers, LLC in Fletcher, NC. The manager Mark led me back to a couple hundred board feet of 12/4 hard maple they had mistakenly ordered for a customer that had been sitting in their warehouse gathering dust for some time. I had been planning to glue up the top from 2″ material so finding 3″ lumber was a real bonus and I quickly agreed to the purchase.
Shown below are Mark and Christian in the warehouse of Mountain Sawyers looking over my new workbench in its near primal state.
_________________________________________
My little contractor’s saw would not cut 3″ hard maple so I had Mountain Sawyers rip and plane two sides of the maple boards for the top, legs and stretchers. Here is what the maple timbers looked like when I got them home to my shop. From the burn marks on the edges of the boards, it is evident that even Mountain Sawyers had trouble cutting the maple. Now comes the fun part of turning these fifty pound boards into a workbench.
______________________________________
Most of the hemlock trees in our North Carolina mountains are diseased and dying. I took this photo on a hike near Mt. Mitchell at about 6000′ in elevation. Even in death trees can be beautiful.
________________________________________
Susan and I took our grandsons hiking on the Appalachian Trail to the top of Bald Mountain. Here grandson Truett is sitting beside the trail watching a through-hiker we had just met, whose trail name was Wiffle Chicken, on his way to Mt. Katahdin in Maine.
__________________________________
I saw this pair of book-ends in an antique mall recently. Hopefully this kind of handsaw abuse will not catch on like painting handsaws did in the 70′s. This was one tool I didn’t have the heart to rescue.
Relationship Building
They say that whatever direction your marriage is headed in, you can get there faster on a tandem bike. So being a guy willing to throw caution to the wind, and as a guy, blissfully ignorant of the true condition of my marriage, I jumped at the chance to get a tandem that a friend of a friend was giving away. Also, with only seven bikes in the garage there was still room for one more.
The free bike was in suprisingly good condition and looked like it had not been ridden many miles. After a good cleaning and putting air in the tires Susan and I were ready to test the tensile strength of our relationship.
After the first few pedal strokes I could tell there was some wisdom in what “they” say about tandem bikes and after several miles it was apparent to me there were areas of communication and trust that I needed to work on with Susan. Because both riders are linked by the same chain that powers the bike, there needs to be agreement on when to pedal and when to stop pedaling. If either rider stops or starts pedaling without considering their partner, both are in for a pretty jerky ride.
The ability to lean a bike while turning is pretty easy to do when there is just one person on the bike. However, complications ensue when the person on the back of the bike second guesses your speed and tilt angle and reacts by throwing their weight in the opposite direction. Then it’s panic time for the rider in front who discovers he is now going too fast to make the corner based on the change in direction caused by his partner’s “steering” lean. Trust is everything on a tandem bike.
I am happy to say our marriage has survived our first couple of voyages of discovery. Don’t look too closely at the photo as the smiles may appear to be forced.
French and Dutch Chisels
(This article was originally written under the title of English Chisels? With the advice of John Heinz I now believe the firmer chisel on the left to be a French chisel and the mortising chisels to be Dutch. I had been swayed by the boxwood handles to believe they might have been English. Please comment if readers have other thoughts. Also check out the beautiful tools John Heinz makes at HEINZTOOLS.com)
Being a card-carrying member of the society of RUST(Rescue of Unloved and Stranded Tools) has its obligations. For instance last week Susan and I went to the beach for the day. On the way back home we made the mistake of stopping at an antique/junk shop just to look around. On a shelf near the back of the shop I made eye contact with three lonely chisels of a breed I had never seen before. Some people can’t pass an animal shelter without adopting. For me, weirdly, it is rusty iron that captures my heart.
All three chisels have hand-turned English Boxwood handles that appear to be crafted by the same maker. Two of the chisels are heavy English mortising chisels with widths of 3/8 and 1/2 inches. The third chisel, I would call a firmer, has a massive two-inch blade on the business end and a large round ball-shaped handle on the other end. The firmer chisel’s steel blade is laminated with the bottom third higher carbon steel than the top two thirds. From the shape of the firmer chisel’s handle and lack of mallet marks on the wood, I believe the handle was made for paring and not chopping.
_____________________________________
To prove to myself that I’m a tool user and not a collector, I immediately started taking the patina off the firmer’s blade by re-grinding the bevel. There was a quarter inch deep chip a prior owner had inflicted on its proud cutting edge. Beware, when you do something obscene with a chisel like opening a can or scraping paint, members of RUST are compelled to call the SPCC (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chisels) hotline to report the abuse.
After regrinding the bevel, the next task in chisel sharpening is lapping the back. Spoiled by the quality of Lie-Neilsen chisels, the back of the firmer chisel seemed almost concave, much like a Japanese chisel. It took over an hour, using 320 grit sandpaper glued with 3M cement to a granite tile, to get the cutting edge flat.
________________________________________
It is not necessary to flatten the entire back for the chisel to be sharp. You can see in the photo below the cutting edge has been honed flat while there is still a large concave area right above the cutting surface. After flattening the back I polished the newly ground bevel to a mirror finish. I haven’t tested the chisel on wood yet to see how the edge holds up but it has shaved enough patches off my left arm that it looks like I have a localized case of the mange.
_____________________________________
There are two mysteries that readers could help me with. Are these English chisels and what are their approximate ages? The firmer chisel is marked Goldenberg Acier Fondu with a crown on one side and an eye with eyebrow on the other. The mortis chisels are both marked Ferdin Rubens with a bell. The chisels’ styles and boxwood handles make me think they are English but the writing seems to be in French. What gives?
For over a hundred years these three chisels have worked together, shared the same toolbox and crossed an ocean to end up in my hands.
_____________________________________
Since posting this article I received in the mail the new second printing of the book, The Tool Chest of Benjamin Seaton from Charlesworth Press, Wakefield. On page 66 there is an illustration which helps date English chisels by their design characteristics. Based on the illustration, I am guessing the firmer chisel that is the subject of this blog article is a type D (fourth from the left) and was made somewhere between 1800 and 1850. Assuming of course the firmer chisel is English.
If you are interested in traditional woodworking I highly recommend The Tool Chest of Benjamin Seaton!
_________________________________________
The walnut book stand seen in the photo was made by me about four years ago from a magazine article in a now defunct magazine called Woodwork. It is a clever design made from five small pieces of wood and four through mortises.
Swing Set
All a couple of boys need in life for hours of fun is a cardboard box. But, if you have four over-indulgent grandparents then a cardboard box is just not enough.
__________________________________________
Last weekend Susan and I met the other grandparents, Mike and Vivian in Atlanta to build an outdoor swing set for our shared grandsons. Our son Evan got things started by breaking ground and digging the first four holes that would form the foundation for the slide tower.
_____________________________________
Truett and Jack got in the action by testing the hole depths. After their inspection, we got approval to move on to the next stage.
_________________________________________
We built two ladder frames from four 14′ treated 4″x4″s and sank them 2′ in the ground and completed the 2″x8″ banding to connecting the ladder frames together. Should you be questioning the engineering, rest assured, I carefully worked out all the details on the back of a napkin with a red crayon.
_________________________________
While Evan and I were busy building the tower frame, Susan and Joy Lynne put the spiral slide together with a couple of enthusiastic helpers. Even with all the “help” it took two very bright people four hours to get the slide together, spiraling the right way.
______________________________________
The treated, wet, yellow pine 4″x6″ swing bar was 12′ long and weighed over 150 pounds. I lost sleep trying to figure out how we were going to get the large timber suspended in the air, square to the tower frame, level and positioned so I could mark a template out to cut the A frame supports. If I could do higher math all this could be figured with a calculator but since I slept through algebra class and never got to calculus, and the lot was sloping, it was beyond my ability to compute. In the end, all it took was a simple scissor brace made from 12′ 2×4′s, to allow us to raise and lower the swing arm and move it back and forth to get it positioned correctly. The temporary scissor brace is still in place as son-in-law Chris bolts on the brace to the A frame.
__________________________________
Papa Mike on his back building handrail while Susan helps from above.
_____________________________________
Mounting the spiral slide was a five person job. L to R: Chris, Joy Lynne, Stephan (Chris’ brother) and Mike. Cabin woodworker hiding behind hat.
______________________________________
A total of 9 holes were dug and 25 eighty pound bags of Quick-crete mixed to anchor the swing set. Here Mike and Stephan are having fun on hole duty.
___________________________________
Grandma Vivian taking a break from building the climbing wall to do a quality control check of the swing with Truett.
_____________________________________
We used the boys to help us position the grab handles in optimum positions. The green slide may have been placed at a slightly steeper angle than the manufacturer intended. Two year old Jack is catapulted out in the yard from the speed gained going down the slide. Who likes a slide where the angle so low you get stuck going down?
________________________________________
With a few long days of hard work here is what we ended up with. The swing set is complete except for the red metal roof that will go on top of the tower decking.
_____________________________________
View showing the 8′ climbing wall. The wall extends a foot higher than the floor of the tower because it is safer to climb over the wall than out on to a floor level with the top of the wall. All the grey stained wood on the project is part of the western cedar I bought in last summer’s wood glutton article.
________________________________________
I had fun making the geometric shaped windows. After cutting the angles I assembled the frames with Kreg pocket holes and screws. The frames were installed on the siding and then the siding was cut away inside the frame to open up the windows.
____________________________________
For the lower deck we made a junior size picnic table and two benches.
______________________________________
Cabinwoodworker getting a little help from Jack on the swing…makes it all worth while!
Applachromophobia*
Like many woodworkers I face applying finishes to a project with some trepidation. I’ve covered good design and close fitting joinery with a bad finish enough times to look for excuses not to apply paint, stain, poly or you name it, to the wooden objects that have been carefully crafted. There was even a period I went through of trying to convince my wife Susan that furniture looked best in its “natural” state with no finish at all, but she didn’t buy it.
Serving dubious masters during my early finishing apprenticeships may explain my current 
applachromophobia. It all started in 5th grade when I helped Mr. Thrilkill, octogenarian retired jockey and next door neighbor, paint the trim in his home. He mixed in slivers of hand soap into the coffee can we were painting from and told me it was a trick he had learned to fill gaps in the trim while painting. At the time I thought he was brilliant. Allowing a fifth grader to paint trim in his house should have been my first clue that Mr. Thrilkill was not a painter I should emulate, but it was several years before I learned that soap actually repelled paint and caulk was a much better crack filler.
Next in my questionable tutelage was my own dear dad, who must have attended the Jackson Pollock school of wood finishes. My father believes that paint or varnish should be poured on the object to be finished and a brush is simply a tool designed to push the pool of finish around the surface. He taught me how to lay objects to be painted on their backs, sides or tops so there was always a horizontal surface to pour on. Once, as an adult, I asked my father to paint a storage room I had added on our home. When I got home from work there was more paint on the ground than there was on the walls. Looking at the archeological evidence I could only guess he sloshed buckets of paint against the walls and spread the paint as it was running down the walls. It took a whole summer of mowing the grass to make the massive paint spill disappear.
No small wonder that a short observation of me painting early in our marriage was enough for Susan to step forward and volunteer as our household painter. She had had extensive painting instruction from her father and grandfather who were very particular about the process.
But, there are times when the temperature, wind direction, barometric pressure and humidity are just perfect and I run out of excuses for not getting out brushes and rags and apply another coat of finish. After four weeks, two coats of barn red, one coat of basic black, three hand rubbed layers of tung oil, and many days of frivoling, I am finally finished with the finish on the windsor chair.
*A well supported fear of applying color finishes on wooden surfaces
_______________________________________
I have taken photographs of the chair in the sun in an attempt to show the accelerated aging I gave the chair by rubbing through the black top coat of milk paint and allowing the red milk paint and some wood to show through. While I wanted the wear surfaces to look well used, I didn’t have the guts to add scaring on the wood like you would find on a real 200 year old antique. I apologize for the large grey glare in the center of the seat.
___________________________________
Here is a better view of the carved seat showing the effects of 200 years of bums rubbing across it…well maybe five minutes of vigorous scrubbing with 0000 steel wool. My photography skill are not allowing me to take these photos without glare. All the grey blotches you see on the seat is glare. Black is difficult to photograph.
___________________________________________
The beauty of milk paint is found in its thinness. Details of the wood show crisply through multiple layers of paint.
______________________________________
Some of the most beautiful wooden objects I’ve ever seen are wooden boats. Over the weekend Susan and I had the chance to spend a day at the Tavares Wooden Boat Show. Following are some of the boats we got to see.
_________________________________________
I don’t think this boat was much longer than 15′, powered by a 283 Chevrolet engine. It sounded pretty awesome when running.
_______________________________________
I enjoyed meeting boat builder/adventurer David Hill. He hand built this canoe with exquisite details in wood. David told me a fascinating story of traveling from Florida to the Amazon basin and back by public busses…Susan told me to not even think about it!
_________________________________________
Have you ever seen a canoe with a built-in jewelery box? It’s really a tackle box but David’s craftsmanship is on the level worthy of holding jewels. The hinges and latch are wooden and drawers are covered with hinged leucite lids. Also note the carved paddle handle visible in the bottom of the photograph. The cord to the left of the tackle box is hand braided and waxed.
_________________________________________
Almost all the wooden boats were made of mahogany.
_____________________________________
The Miss Alison even had a parquet floor.
____________________________________
Some of the boat names caught my attention.
____________________________________
50′s boats all seemed to sport tail fins.
____________________________________
And automotive inspired dashboards.
_____________________________________
I’m thinking there must be a full-time person employed polishing this boat.
________________________________________
Is it a car? a boat? an alien space craft? Although not wooden, this small boat was too cute to not photograph.
______________________________________
We even found a wooden boat we could afford.
Before and After
This photo was taken of our side yard on November 24, 2011. The fence was falling down, landscaping was overgrown and the grade caused water to pool against the house during heavy rains.
____________________________________
Four short months later we are finally finished with the side yard project. Bistro table and chairs came from Lowes and faux wicker chair from Home Depot. We found the narrowness of our patio challenged us when it came to buying furniture, but patio size was dictated by the narrowness of the lot and the need to leave soil to absorb water draining from the patio. The retaining wall on the right makes it easier to see what used to be the height of the slope from the fence to the house.
__________________________________
Yesterday I took my book out on the patio for some afternoon reading only to be interrupted by a nap. I didn’t know Susan had sniped this photo until I downloaded pictures for this post. Helping me take photos for the blog has apparently caused her to get a little too comfortable with my camera.
___________________________________
Yellow trumpet vine in the hickory tree that overhangs our back yard is blooming, leaving the yard littered with golden efflorescence. There is also an osprey nest in the top of this tree that I can’t get a good shot of with the camera. They fussed at us the whole time we were working on the patio.
Got Milk?
Milk paint is the product to turn to when an authentic painted finish is desired on antique reproductions. I ordered my paint on-line from The Genuine Old-Fashioned Home-Made Milk Paint Company, Since 1974. Barn Red was my color of choice for the base color on the chair and Pitch Black will be the top coat. My goal is to slightly age the finish with some strategic rubbing to allow the red base to show through the black top coat in typical wear places of the chair.
Shipped dry, milk paint must be mixed with water at time of use. The ensuing fragrance that came from 
mixing took me back to art class in my primary school days and tempera paint. While the actual ingredients are not clear in the material provided, I did find a reference to lime, milk protein, clays and earth pigments contained in the paint, “just as in Colonial times.”
You would think with just two substances, water and the milk paint powder, it would be a fairly simple concoction to get right. Unfortunately that was not the case for me. In my first mixing effort I ended up with a huge glob of milk paint at the bottom of the jar that no amount of stirring would break up. In desperation, when painting the second coat I actually referred to the directions and tried their suggestion of a small hand mixer at low-speed. The lumps were smaller the second time but the consistency of the milk paint ended up something akin to whip cream. Surprisingly, in spite of my blending problems both coats seemed to turn out ok.
Unlike modern paints that seem to lay on the surface, milk paint soaks into the wood and its thinness allows the sharp details of the leg turnings and spoke shave cut surfaces to show through. Even though the directions say an hour of drying is needed between coats, I took the cautious approach and spaced out my coats between a spring training game of the Pirates and Yankees and a trip to the beach. Milk paint should not be rushed.
___________________________________________
I put the chair in an outdoor setting for this photo because in my research on windsor chairs I found in their proper historical context one would find them being used outdoors. Don’t think for a moment though that this chair will ever have raindrops splattering off its carved seat. Now for a coat of black paint and a couple of hand rubbed coats of tung oil.
_____________________________________
The front fence and gate are now finished.
_______________________________________
A giant tree frog on the shoe of Colossus. Actually this little fellow has been hanging around the back yard as we worked on our landscaping project. Its proper name is Hyla cinerea.
_______________________________________
My friend Bill spotted a Red-shoulderd hawk sitting in my next door neighbor’s tree. When I walked over to take photo the shy hawk took off. Either the hawk was irritated at me for disturbing his reverie or there was a nest nearby, because after taking off the hawk buzzed me a couple of times, giving me opportunity for photos in flight. I love to see the way photos reveal the hawk using individual feathers to control flight.
_____________________________________
Hope springs enternal with the start of spring training games. We got to root for the Pirates as they played the Yankees in Bradenton, FL on the day it was announced Andrew McCutchen had re-signed for a tidy sum of $51 million dollars. Here is Andrew getting up close and personal with the fans.
Eventually, I’ll Get Around to It
My longest woodworking project’s duration so far has been ten years from start to finish. It was a pair of cherry night tables that I set aside for a spell during my baseball coaching years. By the time I had gotten around
to completing the tables, the dark brown patina of Kansas City’s cherry had to be sanded off to match the Dallas “new” wood. Just one of many hazards that can spoil delayed projects. Fortunately shaker designs never seem to go out of style and we have enjoyed using the tables now for as long as it took me to make them.
Remember last July’s blog on my week at Curtis Buchanan’s shop learning to build a continuous arm windsor chair? The article was published just a relatively short eight months ago. I brought the chair with us to Florida this winter with plans to quickly finish it. A flock of robins arrived two days ago on their spring migration north reminding me there is not much time left to finish the chair.
Once work on the chair was started I re-discovered the joy of using refined tools such as the spoke shave and card scraper to get the chair’s surfaces prepared for milk paint compared to the last few weeks of using a shovel and post hole digger on the yard project. Again I am reminded of why woodworking is my passion and not landscaping.
__________________________________________
When you last saw this chair the spindles continued through the arm and still had their wedges sticking out around the perimeter. All spindles have been carved flush with the arm and all arm surfaces scraped ready for painting.
With the exception of the carved portion of the seat, every surface of this chair has been cut or scraped with a blade. For those of you not familiar with traditional woodworking, knife cut wood surfaces react differently to finishing than sanded surfaces. If you were to look at sanded wood grain under a microscope the surface would be rough and abraded whereas knife cut surfaces are sharply sheared off. To get a consistent finish on the entire chair it will be necessary to raise sanded seat grain with water and resand it to get it smooth.
_____________________________________
The photo on the left was taken while using the spokeshave and the one on the right using the card scraper. I’m using my body as a large chair vice by sitting on the chair to keeping it from moving. A right leg also works to clamp furniture in place as seen in the photo on the right. My guess is the human body was the first woodworking vice/clamp ever used and it still works pretty well today.
_____________________________________________
I picked up this chair scraper the other day at an antique mall for $13. It’s a beautiful tool made from rosewood, and was in good enough condition to be used without sharpening. Most of the tools I find in antique stores are overpriced and are in such bad condition they can’t be restored. I’m guessing the owner didn’t know what the tool was since it was marked as a plane. The shavings under the scraper are there just to prop it up for the photo and were actually made by a spokeshave.
__________________________________________
Laying sod is a rewarding job. “Green side up” is the only rule and progress is measurable.
____________________________________________
We’ve finished the sidewalk, rerouted the sprinklers and planted the flowerbed. Finishing the fence across the front of the yard and building a gate are the only tasks left. At my speed probably another month of work. The iron geranium pot originally belonged to Susan’s grandmother and was used to wash clothes.
There was a heavy rain a few evenings ago and it looks like our landscaping changes will keep water from pooling against the house.
_____________________________________
View from the front of the sidewalk showing the recent addition to the retaining wall.
St. Valentine’s Day
In fourth grade I thought Patty Lommori was the cutest girl in our class. One school day while walking home for lunch, I noticed Patty across the street walking ahead of me. To this day I cannot tell you why, but I reached down, picked up a rock and threw it at her. My aim was true and I hit Patty in the head, sending her runninghome crying. The phone rang shortly after I got home and I quickly answered it. A very angry mom asked those six dreaded words that no kid wants to hear “can I speak to your mother?” Other than testosterone poisoning of the brain, I can’t explain what I did. I liked Patty, did not want to hurt anyone, and had never hit a thing I had aimed at before in my life.
While still not very subtle, my romantic expressions have improved since grade four…a little. So after thirty-four years of marriage Susan was not surprised when I asked her to help me build a patio on Valentine’s day and “by the way, would you like patio pavers for Valentine’s?” Instead of throwing rocks at Susan, I spent the morning handing them to her. Our friends Steve and Allyson came over to help us make the work go faster and turn our rock laying enterprise into a party. For lunch Susan put out a red table-cloth and served a bright red strawberry pie for dessert. Strawberries are in season here in central Florida and we are gorging on a sweet variety of berries that are much too fragile to be shipped north.
________________________________________
To sart the the patio I set 2 x 4′s to the grade needed for the underlying sand to support the patio pavers. Once the grade boards were established, another 2 x 4 was used to screed the sand to the tops of the grade boards. Anywhere else in the world it would be necessary to build a sand base to lay patio stones but with Florida’s natural sand base the whole state could be a patio. After several water soakings of the screeded sand for compaction, adding more sand and re-screeding to make sure the surface would be smooth for laying pavers, it was time to remove the grade boards. A hand tamper was used to solidify the new sand filling the space where the grade boards had been.
______________________________________
Here we are sweating it out on Valentine’s Day. Steve and I basically spent our time as mules hauling pavers from the driveway to the patio area trying to keep up with Allyson and Susan skillfully maintaining the pattern of the three sizes of pavers we were laying.
_______________________________
Photo of the finished patio measuring 30′ long and 8′ wide. While we would have liked to have made the patio wider, we wanted to leave plenty of yard below the patio to keep water from pooling against the sliding glass door, as it had done in the past. There is a 1.5″ grade drop in the patio from the foundation of our home to the edge of the patio. Sod will be laid between the patio and the retaining wall, hopefully leaving enough soil to absorb the water running off the patio.
Our patio pavers were purchased at Home Depot and are called Marseilles Harvest Blend. Polymeric paver joint sand holds the cobbles in place.
