Geckos!
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The deck before removal -
After much of the removal. We still needed to dig out the brick border and some of the grass -
The excavated side yard, with irrigation and electrical installed. 4-6 inches of baserock will go in next, followed by about 1 inch of sand, then the pavers. -
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Laying out the retaining wall for the upper layer. -
Harry inspects the workmanship. Or the opportunities. -
Laying out the wall. The cinder blocks will be used to create the steps out the door. A sample gecko paver rules over it all. -
The back step and underlayer (compacted base rock). We decided that neither the step nor the terrace were high enough, so we added another 2 inch solid cinder block on top of each. -
Me compacting the upper layer. Corners and curves are hard. -
Harry makes sure that the geckos march in line. The tolerances on these pavers are small, so we actually had to pick them up and start over to get them to fit. -
Harry and Juni loves them some geckos. -
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Sometimes it was easy to put them down, and sometimes it was not. We'd jiggle, take some up, curse, plead, and eventually get them down. We broke a few in the process, but were able to use most of them when we cut them at the edges. -
A council of 3 clean ones. It seems that the stones had been stored for years with cardboard between them, so most were stained and mottled, and this only came off with multiple cleans with a strong acid concrete cleaner. Of course, the sample that we were given was very clean and pretty, and no one told us that they'd be stained. -
Taking a break. -
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The bed to the right will hold dwarf citrus trees. -
Nice cutting job with the tile saw. The geckos are concrete, so they cut OK with a diamond saw. -
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We're leaving loose edges for some planters and along the lawn. Since they interlock so well, they will not walk away, even though they have legs. -
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We had to lower the lawn edge a bit by peeling it back and removing soil. The loose edges were seeded with grass seed. -
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Juni makes sure that the diamonds for the upper layer are comfortable. They are. -
The upper layers now have the additional 2 inch cinder block. The edges get bullnose brick. Because we are optics people (hence the Escher tesselation and the optical effect diamonds), the bricks have a metal coating which gives them a dichroic reflection, changing in hue from red to blue and purple, depending on light and reflection. We're putting down the bricks with paver bond and mortaring in between. The line of boards is for the wheelbarrow so that we don't break more geckos. -
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Mine! -
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Here come the bricks. Cutting corners and curves was challenging. -
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Placing the diamonds. See the wrong one? -
Fail! -
Precision cutting -
Oops. -
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Polymer sand went in between the gecko and diamond pavers. We were able to use the vibrator on the diamonds, but when we tried it on a test gecko area, it broke several of them. So we just used a rubber mallet to vabrate them down. Once the sand was in, they locked in quite nicely. -
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We rolled back the grass and removed some dirt to lower the lawn down. New grass is sprouting from planted seeds. -
The BBQ area is a future project -
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We sealed the geckos with a multi-purpose sealer to try to hold back the spots from the redwood tree droppings, and from my BBQ droppings. The diamond area is sealed with lacquer-based wet-look sealer. -
We mortared in some wire hooks under the overhang; these will be used to hold up solar-powered EL wire lighting. The bare cinder block surface will get covered with tiles we collect on our travels. -
A panorama shot around the corner -
Pondering 5 surfaces
We took out an old deck, and replaced it with a Trex deck and two levels of hardscape patio.
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On February 18,2011 Mattemma said:
"I have never seen gecko pavers. That is so neat!"
On August 13,2008 said:
"Kudos for finding a way to recycle the lumber. I love he cat watching over the construction process."
On August 6,2008 YardShareBryan said:
"Congrats on being a featured yard this week!"
On July 21,2008 YardShareBryan said:
"What a great patio. It's a very unique look, and you've incorporated it into your yard well. Thanks for sharing."
OnJuly 19,2008 said:
"In which we build a hardscape with interlocking gecko pavers. Of course, we make it as hard as possible by choosing the hardest pavers to place.nWe took out the whole deck, about 1000 sq. ft. lat year. We used www.freecycle.org to dispose of the wood from the deck, which worked out great. There was so much interest in the wood that we actually got people to help us take it apart. One guy spent 3 days helping us, and then he took the wood to build some hillside retaining walls. In all, about 8 p"