Patio - Part Two

Another DIY home improvement story.

So, today was basically shot getting and hauling bricks. I started out leveling the sand. Got all 20 bags dumped in, needed eight more. So I decided to get the bricks as well.

Surprise! The Home Depot nearest me decided to discontinue them. They had the Terra Cota color, yuk, but no brown, marginally acceptable. The existing stuff is the brown. It's actually a mix of browns and light reds. Could be worse. At $0.59 each, I guess they are OK. I prefer fired clay brick, but I'm not tearing all this out.

So back home to evaluate my options on the manufacturers web site.

http://www.pavestone.com/retail/paver-decor.html

After seeing all the retailers are either Home Depot or Wal*Mart it became apparent to me that going to the next closest Home Depot might be a good bet. It was. Found them. The color is pretty close. In case you are wondering, no, I was not going to call them. You have to wait 20 minutes to talk to someone to get the wrong answer most of the time. As it was I could barely check out. The guy could literally not tell that the stuff on the cart matched the picture in his binder. Holly spatial perception Bat Man.

This was a subjective call too. I needed to see how far off the color was going to be. So a visit was a must.

Loaded up all I could get in the truck.

Then went back to the regular Home depot for the edge bricks. Yeah, I decided to do the edging after all. Figured it would look dumb without it. Also got the sand.

So by the time all that was carried into the back yard, it was 3:00 again. I got a late start after watching George Stephanapholus this morning. It's the only in depth news show I have time for lately.

Go Obama!

Later,
John

Extending the patio - Part One

Just some quick notes on this weekend's project of extending the brick patio out back.

Dude! This is a lot of work! I'm extending the bricks that were here when we bought the place another 32 square feet into a planter bed. This planter bed is hopelessly shaded from the sun and relatively cool. Probably a great place for mushrooms and maybe some ferns, but nothing else. Nothing has ever grown there except some spider plants and they didn't do so well either. The soil is very damp too.

That makes me wonder about the plumbing ... Nah, there's no standing water. When I have seen what they call "slab leaks" there is water pushing up right below the slab level. I've dug down a foot below that and no water is pushing up. So we should be OK.

Soil is a misnomer. It's clay and some dirt. Our street is sitting on top of at least 20 feet of fill I think. They put in a retaining wall and leveled our complex with Main Street. We are at the back of the complex which was the natural low spot back in 1979. It's not anymore.

Anyway here's basically what's happened so far.

The first stop of the day was my cleaners and then OSH. Picked up some heavy duty plastic bags, a square garden spade, and some big plastic bags normally used for storing chairs and such to line the back of the truck with. ('97 Toyota 4-Runner). Headed home. By now it's like 7:30 or eight so I can start with the quiet work. I'm in a condo with neighbors on both sides. So, keeping the peace is an issue at 6:00 a.m.

Then the crap in the planter was loaded out in the 42 gallon 3 mil plastic bags I just got at OSH. Anything less than three mil tears. These are sold under the label "contractor's clean up bags" very often. The brand I get at OSH is Tuffies. I used bags so I could get the stuff through the house to the truck with a minimum of mess.

A lot of people use five gallon plastic buckets too. These are great of you have a dumpster or an open truck. With the 4-Runner I like to keep the mess to a minimum, so having it all individually bagged is a plus. I know, not especially "green" on this one, but you have to compromise I guess. I'm a little surprised however that I have not seen these bags made of recycled polyethylene. They could be any mish mash of colors around. Who cares?

Each bag held 5 - 6 bricks and or 5 - 7 scoops of dirt. About 40 pounds. I then hauled them out to the Toyota 4-Runner. I blew through 24 bags in about an hour. Did some math, figured that was all the truck should handle and went to the dump. The dump weighed the load at about 900 pounds. $20.00 and I'm off for load #2.

Back at the ranch, there is now a soldier course border and a two course (layer of brick) high stub wall between the patio and my hole, which is not totally cleared out yet. I can see under the soldier course there is a small footing. Armed with my 2 pound Estwing sledge or "single jack" I go at it.

Soldier course, by the way is a term for a row of brick set next to each other in the same direction. Thus they look sorta like soldiers all lined up for a parade or something else. (Bring them home damn it.)

OK then ... First thing was to score the brick stub wall with my Makita 4 inch grinder and a diamond blade. I've had this blade for years. I don't use it often, but when I need it, it's great. I scored it where I wanted the demolition to stop. The scoring was marginally effective however. This is concrete brick and does not break as cleanly as clay brick.

Oh, make no mistake, this brick is tough. This is not cinder block or cement brick. This is concrete brick. I think this stuff is tougher than any clay brick by a mile. I'll get a picture of it up soon. It's not as good looking as clay, but it's OK.

So after beating on the stub wall for ten minutes I determined I need a 10 pound sledge and a face shield. My glasses are not adequate eye protection for this one. Off to OSH. They have a nice one with a plastic handle. Presumably there's some fiberglass in it too. I went for that one. It's a Jackson. And it appears to be US made.

Wood handles break too easily. One miss, wood hits brick, handle shatters right at the base of the head and the 10 pound of steel go flying. Bad. They also get loose. I will use this once every two years. When I go to use it, I don't want to have to do handle maintenance.

Metal handles are too jarring and add mass where you don't really get any benefit from it.

As far as the "green" aspect, I think it's a wash. I saved part of a tree. But I created demand for an oil product. The handle will last longer thus diminishing demand for another part of a tree down the road. It'll also diminish demand for another manufactured good and all the resources that go with that.

The fiberglass handles are really the best bet.

So after I get some more Tuffies, an American Optical face shield, very nice, and a couple of other impulse buys I couldn't resist it's back to the bricks.

The face shield assembled easily and was pretty easy to adjust. But could have been better. But the plastic is thick. With that on and my gloves back on I start swinging were I had been beating on it before. It was like the bricks were not even there. The amount of velocity you can get at the end of a long handle combined with 5X the mass made a huge difference.

After about twenty minutes the wall was in pieces and the footing was in one to 18 inch chunks. Ready for the bagging again. So another 20 ish bags later, I'm done with this part and the hole is cleaned out and ready for the sand underlayment.

Another half a ton of garbage to the dump and $20.00 later it's over to Home Depot to get 20 bags of sand and a bag of premix mortar. I got that loaded into the truck and called it quits. I was pretty sore by then. It was 3:00 and I had been running hard since about 6:00 a.m.

So today will begin with loading the sand into the back and leveling that. Then I will go to Home Depot to get more brick and with any luck get this done today.

I need to do a post on how to use a sledge hammer and bust up concrete at some point. There are a couple of fine points I learned the hard way that make life a ton easier. There's also some thought that needs to be given to when the sledge is too small and it's time to go rent some power tools.

Pictures to be added to this post later.

Some Patina Notes

Whaaat? Yeah, patina. I've been making some steel stair rails for my condo. Picture to the left here. Long story. But today I'm getting warmer on the finish.

I decided not to paint them. So I'm using a patina. Best I can tell this solution is a mild acid with something in it that oxidizes the iron a bit. But not so much that it strips the oxide off. I got a process to work pretty well so I'm recording it here.

The patina is sold by Sculpt Nouveua. http://www.sculptnouveau.com/ It's made by Birchwod Casey and goes by the name PC-9 Presto Black (Aka: Gun Bluing)

http://www.birchwoodcasey.com/metal/iron.html

I also got some red dye to give a red tint to blend with my tera cota quarry tile.

The directions are kinda sketchy. So I had to experiment a lot. So far here's the process.

1.) Sand the metal, a lot. I belt sanded the top of the rail and then gave everything else a good once over. The lower bar can't really be seen up close, so it needed to be clean, but not as good looking as the top. Make sure you wear a good dust mask (3M n98) and hearing protection if you are belt sanding.

2.) De-grease with lacquer thinner or acetone. Don't use paint thinner. Paint thinner has oils in it that stay behind. De-greasing requires a bulk wipe down to get all the crap off, and then a second wipe down to get it really clean. Sometimes a third round is needed. The final should be done with paper towels or really clean cotton rags. White only. You don't want any dyes getting on the metal.

If you don't de grease you get the finish picured which is called "birdseye". It's the result of the lacquer not sticking to the oil deposits on the surface of the metal. Also, the patina doesn't go one as easily and you end up using more of it. It's not cheap.

3.) Light acid wash with a 10% or so solution of HcL (33% HcL Pool Acid cut by 1/3 rd.)

4.) Apply the patina solution using a Scotch Brite pad. This was tricky. I started by getting some on the pad and then getting the entire surface damp. Then I put more on the pad and went pack over it. The more you go over it the darker it gets. Don't press too hard or you strip off the oxide layer that you want to leave behind.

There's a fine line here. The Scotch pad aids in agitating the patina to get it to react with the metal, but the harder you work it the less oxide is left behind. The trick appears to be to use as little down force as you can and keep the pad moving all along the rail.

5.) Wipe it down with a dry rag and dry wipe or "burnish" the residue off with a dry rag. Use lots of rags along the process. Dirty rags just leave residue behind.

6.) Repear until it's dark enough. My second rail is lighter than the first one. I might re-do it. Not sure. I'm not sure anyone will really notice.

7.) I applied some red dye in a clear lacquer with a sponge that was wet with lacquer thinner. Again the trick was to wipe the entire rail in one continuos movement. I actuall did one side and then the other. It is streaky, but that's the effect I was looking for. If you want it even, an air brush would be required.

8.) Spray it with clear lacquer.