Laying Bricks

When I have a nice summer's day on my hands, and nothing much else going on, you know what I like to do?

Lay some brick.

Oh, sure, who doesn't. I laid the whole patio a few years back, and despite my lack of technical bricklaying skills, it's holding up fine. Thank you, gravity, for your role in my success.

Today, I attended to two special issues. 

1. In the far right corner, closest to the faucet and hose, the bricks had sunk down by several inches. My task was to dig up all the bricks, add lots more sand, then relay them.
2. And on the far left, I decided to add a couple more rows of bricks. On cool summer evenings, this is prime real estate for eating dinner, and my goal was to create a little more room for my table and chairs. I needed to dig up all the spring bulbs that would have been trapped under the new bricks, take out a wheelbarrow load of garden soil, add sand and lay down the newbs. 

So that was my mission for the day. And sorry about it, but I was on way too much of a tear to stop for 'before' photos. When I am facing a gnarly job, I have to plow in at top speed before I talk myself out of it. So 'afters' are all I have to share.

I understand if the final effect does not knock you off your feet. It's just a scrappy little section of patio that looks kinda funny with extra sand tossed around and green stuff growing between the old bricks but not the new. 

To me, however, I see a lot more than that: five 50-pound bags of sand that I hauled from store to car to patio, several hours of digging up bricks, adding sand, smoothing and tamping, and then relaying the bricks, and at least a solid hour of weeding. Not that fun.

But I am so, so happy to be done. Yay for laying bricks!