Driveway Musing, Day 2

As I left the house for work this morning, the crew was already here.  Three guys were spreading the last of the gravel fill, wetting it down and vibrating it into level submission.  Another was trundling loads of sand from the truck to the back of the patio to start layering in the sand.  Level lines were strung, and the sand that was added was leveled with a board and then smoothed with what looked like a super-sized wooden mortar tool.  I was not going to be able to watch the progress today, I would have to wait until I got home to see what happened.

My daughter and husband had a bet about how much the crew could finish today.  She figured that only 1/4 of the pavers would be laid by this afternoon, her dad said it would be more.  Remember the movie Guys and Dolls?  Sky Masterson and Nathan Detroit are talking about bets, and Sky tells Nathan the advice given to him by his father:  if someone bets you they can get a jack to jump out of a sealed deck of cards and spit cider in your ear, don't take that bet.  They know something you don't and you'll end up with cider in your ear.  My daughter hasn't internalized the wisdom of Sky's father; she lost the bet and now has cider in her ear in the form of the dime she owes her dad.  They got much more than 1/4 done.

By the time I got home, the pavers were almost all laid.  From back patio to driveway's end, it was only missing the final edge on the lawn-side of the driveway.  For this, they wanted my opinion on how best to lay out the curves.  The drawing our salesman had done had some big looking curvy bits, but that would take us into the remaining lawn and would require more pavers than we had left.  (There was a small area that the salesman missed on the square footage estimate but had included in the instructions that used up most of the slack put in all  orders for supplies.)  The salesman had dropped by at our request, and together we looked at the plans and the actual area and settled on some curves that looked nice and didn't require extra pavers.  The foreman chalked the curves onto the pavers, ready for tomorrow morning.

I walked out our back doors, and took a look, and I must say it looks nice.  Of course, all our motley bits of outdoor gear are stowed in the back yard out of site for the time being, and this adds to the effect.  Beyond that, though, I took a look at how they laid the pavers and was quite impressed.  I sew, and I know what a pain it is to do mitered corners.  There were a number of spots where the pavers had to fit an inside corner, and the edging pavers were deftly mitered; so were the pavers one row inside the edges.  I was impressed enough that I made our daughter come out and admire it, which she did.  It's good when the kids humor their eccentric parents.

Until next time!