Remembrances of Salvages Past

For the last month Pete and I have been building a patio/pergola in the backyard. I’d been kicking around how to do this since I wrote about 4.5 Tons of Salvaged Goodness.

We decided to locate it near, but not right next to the pond. I decided on a roughly 10 X 16 size. My idea was to consider it two 8 X 10 squares. The one closer to the pond would be the conversation area, the one farther away would be a good place for a picnic table.

I don’t have detailed photos of the entire process, but here is the rough area after we rented a skid loader and leveled out the area and dug it out for the ag lime base. Of course it stared raining right after we finished so we quickly covered it with a tarp:



Here is a shot from the lower yard, we widened out one of the paths to accommodate the loader and to wheel barrow up the lime and later the sand:



Speaking of which, here is the sand pile, it was slightly smaller than the lime pile. We laid a level base of six inches of packed lime, then we laid packed sand on top of that.



We ordered pavers, in three sizes ( 3 X 6 inch, 6 X 6 inch, and 6 X 9 inch) from the local yard. I’d had four 30 X 56 inch pieces of soapstone that I bought from Friends of Historic Preservation’s salvage at 925 E. Washington St. in Iowa City. I wanted to center two pieces in the middle of each of the squares. So we measured and laid them first:



Then we started to lay the pavers:





I had a box of limestone pavers I found at the old UI law school salvage. I used those randomly throughout the field.



Next post I’ll talk about how we installed the concrete blocks and set the cement pillars on top of them.