A recently finished a three day job in Acomb, York. The customer needed some dry access for his sheds and back of his garden, but didn’t want a full patio, just some sunken stepping stones. It was hard graft but it was also quite enjoyable as I was listening The lord of the Rings audiobook (sooo good).
The start was quite slow, as I spent a few hours with my tapemeasure, my trusty string line and a few wooden pegs trying to mark out the areas where I need to dig. We had 600 X 600 square stones with 200mm gap in between each step. 24 holes in total, about 140-150 mm deep each. You can lay steps over just a bit of sand, but the customer wanted a hard core base and sand/cement over to make sure the stones won’t move in the future. To keep me company, there was a brave little robin flew back and forth, it was quite curious what I am doing and also quite happy, as there was plenty of worms to pick up from the dug up soil.
The first day went with measuring and digging and it was nearly dark by the time I finished. On the second day I went to collect the small plate compactor (aka whacker plate), filled up holes with MOT (hard core bits with sand) and compacted them down to the required height. And as I had still a few hours left, I started mixing up sand/cement and started laying the stepping stones. I also just managed to finish the first book from the Lord of the Rings and I was quite eager to listen to the rest.
The third day morning was quite chilled, a bit too cold to work with sand/cement so I started to fill back the edges with top soil and returned the machine I hired. By the time I finished the sun came out and it was warm enough to start mixing up some mortar. I finished laying the stepping stones just after lunch and I only had to fill all the edges around the steps and give the place a good tidy up.
The customer was really satisfied with the job and I was really happy with it as well. I only managed to get half way through my second book (The two towers) but I have quite a lot of jobs booked in now, I will have enough work to finish the whole trilogy.
Screw it! 