lifting the old bricks – repaving1

repaving1The work on re-paving the backyard has begun. My neighbor from down the street is taking the old brick pavers. That means less stuff for the landfill and less time needed to complete the job. (They don’t have to haul the old brick away; one of the guys is stacking them in my neighbor’s garage.)

The old brick has been there some 20 years. All the dry-mortar between the pavers has been gone for a while and I’ve had to lift, clean and re-set the bricks in order to remove the moss and the weeds that want to grow in the empty spaces where the dry-mortar was. The wolmanized walls between the main patio and the upper section of the yard were bowed at almost 70o. The retaining walls had a layer of brick between the two wolmanized 6X6’s. The bricks gave the walls a unique old look and act as drains for the upper levels. The walls just bowed. (I’m hoping that the new walls will stay perpendicular. After all the upper levels have had years to settle.)

Also, over the years I made some changes to the five platforms that make up the backyard. (There was a long flowerbed on the side and a wrought iron fence between our house and Joe-and-Rose’s. When the sewer needed fixing – the big dig – the whole side of the yard got rebuilt. The flower-bed and the fence went. Also new cement was poured cleaning up the whole side-yard.) The dig, the new fence and the new cement flooring radically changed the platforms closest to the back-door. And new wolmanized borders had to be added to perimeter the lower platforms and un-weathered pieces and miss-matched bricks got added to the mix. (I compensated by adding pots to corners with the most miss-matched elements.)

The new pavers and walls should bring back a more uniform look.