A 5 year project is nearly at an end. We originally started with building a garage. When we bought the house it had a carport….and hubby waited years till we could build one.
Well, 2 months after the garage was built we found there was a bunch of air pockets in the floor, and in the end they ripped it out and re-poured it
. Which left us with 22 yards of concrete slabs in our front yard which, we called “yard art”. With that we built a courtyard/patio 40ft long between the house and garage which ends with the 6ft wall you see in the photo.
Because, What else would we do with it!
So, for the past few years we’ve had a mini mountain of rubble (as in solid, it ain’t going no where pile of concrete) that we would rabbit up and down to get to the back property. We needed steps.
We’d looked at various plans and designs for steps but everything was just to formal for us. Backed up to the wooded area, we wanted something that would blend into the surroundings. We’d visited quite a few quarry’s looking at rocks but they were pricy to say the least. So we started stashing and saving. It seemed crazy to us to pay so much for rock to finish a project that (other than the garage) was less than $500.00!
Then a few weeks after one of our quarry visits, Larry got a call saying (one we visited a few times) the company was going out of business…come get which ever rock we wanted….free!. SCORE!!!
Each stone is 6-8 inches thick and at least 4 ft. across and 300-500 lbs.…we wanted nice wide steps. We have folks of all ages in and out here at our house and well, we’re no spring chickens ourselves any more.
We wanted steps wide and safe for all ages.
The stones have sat in back of the house for a few years while we built the addition & all the while we’ve discussed what we wanted to do/could do with them
Last night Larry came home and said “wanna play with rocks”? Ahhh! Be still my beating heart!
Prep work and planning done was done last night so this morning at 7:30 we started in with overcast skies that thankfully stayed to shade us all day.
I’m pretty sure our family thinks we’re nuts.
I know they think we’re weird!
2 popped in to “see what we were up to this time”
FYI….Crowbars break under 500 lb. stones. Just a fact I thought I’d share..but you need them to arm-strong the stones
So do shovels…I think I’ll paint it and use it for yard art of some kind
We used Big Red to place the stones in general locations
Moving those suckers manually 4-8 ft. up the hill was not an option.
I learned all kinds of new things . How to drive the tractor, maneuvering stones pushing them into place with the blade
Isaiah has been a part of this entire project for the past 5 yrs. He said he was going to be here to help finish it & boy was he was a major help today
The last stone. We weren’t sure there was enough energy in us to finish but, by 5pm we were done!
Isaiah hosed off the gravel
We are done!
The stones are brown and blue, I wish I could capture the colors.
Supper was a big salad cause that’s all we had the energy for…as in energy to chew.
Fire in the fire pit with s’mores for dessert.
Our next project?
I think I’d like it to be something that does not involve rocks!!
Katie
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