One of the tasks we have to complete before the doors can be repainted is to put in a patio in front of the french doors. I remember my grandmother used to call the door patio a “stoop”. We were able to get a free load of sand from a neighborhood near us in Arvada through craigslist. The household had too much sand delivered for a backyard firepit project and wanted the rest out of their driveway. The guy even helped shovel it onto our truck!
Free Sand
I used about half of the truckload to underlay the flagstone that had been sitting a pile near the berm wall on the east side of the house just waiting for a project.
Sand on weed block
When we turned over the stones we found those weird bugs living between them, kind of like ants with the black sand, but they also had white spun baby hatching globs. They scattered before I could get the camera out though.
Yuck. I hate these bugs crawling in the house. They seem to come in on the produce from the garden too. We think they are earwigs.
Flagstone Hotel
Trying to fit big pieces of flagstone together is a bit difficult. Inevitably gaps will have to be filled with smaller pieces. I did not try to split the flagstone to fit. Didn’t want to end up with a bunch of broken pieces.
Flagstone Fitting
We have a few more really big pieces of flagstone that were under these loose pieces. They would have to be dug up, or we will be on the lookout for a craigslist offering of more flagstone to finish the patio. I left a little dirt between the patio and the front flagstone walk at this end. That kind of matches the other side of the walk with a little green area between the patios.
Need More Flagstone