The patio

When we moved into our new digs, E and I made an unofficial vow that this house would be the house we did not phone it in on.

If there was an issue, it would get solved. The right way.

Sure, I got a laundry list of things that aren't done yet, but the gist is simple: You make a list, do it in any order - but anytime something gets crossed off - it isn't coming back for a loooong time.

With that in mind, we tackled the landscaping. This had been an issue in the previous house - we were the low spot and collected the neighborhood's surplus rainwater. It sucked.

This time around, we're in the middle of a hill - something I liked, but didn't fully appreciate. If you're on the side of a hill, you naturally have a hill taking away all the water from three sides of your house.

It's that fourth side you need to worry about. The uphill side. Done right, its water is diverted to either side and thence to the bottom of the hill. Done badly, you inherit all the rainwater landing between the side of your house and the top of the hill.

Our fourth side? Done badly.

So we called in the experts and had them re-grade 3/4ths of our lawn. It was expensive, annoying and took a long time. But we wanted it crossed off.

And so it was - except for one thing.

The patio.

The people who used to own the house (let's call them..ah - The Doofuses) they'd put in a brick patio right outside of the addition. Trouble is, they'd put it in dead level. And pretty high up - it stopped right below the level of the siding. Meaning, water easily sloped against the house and was trapped between the wooden sill plate and the brick/concrete of the patio.

If you were water and had the choice of going through concrete, or going through wood, which would you choose?

Hint: Not the concrete

First landscaping guy we had look at our yard told us we'd have to tear out the patio and put it in lower. "It's a Pandora's Box you got right there. No telling what you'll find when you start digging."

Yes, no telling.

Well, we paid the guys to dig it up - so I'm telling.

We found a concrete slab about 6" thick, resting atop 8" thick foundation walls that ran over four feet down into the ground. We also found carpenter ant damage. Lots and lots of carpenter ant damage. Luckily it wasn’t structural, so all we needed to do was seal it up and we’d be good, assuming we got the drainage issue solved.

Originally, we'd asked the landscaping guys to tear out the concrete, when they told me that would involve digging a canyon and cost thousands more I asked them what the structural threat was.

"Zero. You can put in your patio once we take off the top slab and you're good. All you'll need is a base to put the bricks on and we'll set that up for you."

(I have this ghost of a memory where they even offered to have their bobcat scrape off the top few inches of the remaining patio footing. But since that would be supremely ironic given what happened later, I’m going to presume I’m mistaken. For the record, we’re going to say they refused to help. Laughed at me and refused my money. It’s just simpler that way.)

Oh. Okay - I thought. I envisioned my landscaping done and a perfectly smooth, properly graded layer of sand awaiting an afternoon's work of replacing the patio bricks.

In the grand tradition of vendor-client relations, there was a bit of a miscommunication.

The vendor did remove the top slab completely, that was good.
But his version of "setting up a base" for my bricks was to put my 700 bricks on two pallets atop a heap of sand.

Meaning, not only would I have to level and grade my own sand - I would first have to move 700 bricks to one side. And then I could start.

Nice.