2016....the final furlong. I can hear the rather large lady warming up!
In the fallow winter period we had made our decision as to what sort of paving we would lay down. Along either side, we would use the Saxon slabs. Where the side paths meet the patio, we would define the edge with a row of setts. We had used all the setts we had bought from Dave Thomas, and had to find some more from the reclamation yard. They had nothing similar, but did have some reasonably priced reclaimed 'Bristol Setts', apparently taken up from the streets of Bristol, unsurprisingly. They are not granite, but they are very, very hard, and offered a contrast, which is what we wanted. We had decided on grey Brazilian slate for the patio, a bit nervous about how it would look with all the other types of hardscape, but hey ho! After one of the wettest (even by Cornish standards) winters on record, I didn't get out to play until March 18th. A few days before we had ordered another 230 Saxon slabs from Jewsons, they arrived and we were off again....the light was certainly visible now at the end of the tunnel.
I had left off in November at the top of the ramp, and I continued from that point. It was difficult to know what to do where the path met the ramp, as the slope was going two differant ways. A method I had adopted before, was to use cut-off's to make small square pieces, and laying them in a way that 'blended' the two levels. This was perfectly satisfactory, in fact when it was pointed, it looked really good.
I did exactly the same for the two way sloping part of the upper ramp, and continued laying the slabs all the way up to the front.
Around this time I expected to be buying a greenhouse, but as it turned out my Father no longer wanted his. We took it apart, moved it in a van, cleaned everything, gave the wood a good coat of preserver, and reassembled it in the space I had long reserved for it.
Before paving the East side and patio I needed to build three steps, to the side door, patio door, and summer house. I bought some 6"x4"x4" sawn granite blocks from Cornish Lime, and these were ideal, the centre space filled with weak concrete to support the slab.
Back over to pave the East side, and lots of cutting to do. Three circular manhole covers made for some difficult cuts, it was also difficult to mark out where the cut was needed in the first place. I had both 9" and 4" angle grinders, only having them equipped with diamond discs made this possible with any degree of neatness.
We had a change of heart about the garden bed in the middle of the patio, and had decided to abandon the idea. I had dug out all the earth and distributed it over the garden and raised beds, and had been filling the void with any rubble that we had produced. and spoil I had dug out in preparing for the stone circle on the drive. Now we were preparing to pave the patio, the material in the void was compacted and I was ready to concrete over. At this stage only a weak mix was needed, it would be covered over in the next few weeks with the slate.
With the pointing completed along both sides of the house, it was time to order the slate. We had decided to use 600mm x 400mm x 20mm (calibrated) grey Brazilian slate. This was quite thick enough laid on such a solid concrete base. As always we shopped around online, and found a supplier called Infinite Paving. We would need to order quite a bit more than we actually required, because you have to buy in full pallets.
A few of days later, the three packs of slate arrived on a curtain sided wagon with a tail lift and a pallet truck. There was no way, the pallet truck would run over the crushed stone on the drive, but luckily we had our 'landing area'. He reversed down to it, and with a few grunts and groans, we had it all safely on the ground. We had three packs, 75 slates in each, covering 18 square metres per pallet. I unpacked it all and stacked it alongside the house nearer to where it would be used, and recycled all the wood packaging and pallets.
After deliberation, we decided to lay the slate in brick bond, side to side rather than down the patio. The 'Bristol setts' had to be sliced in half with a diamond cutting disc to achieve a thickness that would blend from the Saxon slabs to the slate. I had read that, as slate is not porous, you have to take a lot of care to lay it, if you expected it to stay 'stuck down'. The best way....I read...was to lay them on a full bed of mortar, but just before you lay them, you paint the underside with a mix of 'SBR' and cement. You pour some SBR (a latex based, water resistant bonding agent) into a bucket, and mix in cement until it becomes like a slurry you can paint on. I have to say, it works a treat, and giving each piece a coat before you lay it is pretty straight forward. Because the concrete base was already giving the levels we wanted to follow, I wanted a way of making sure the bed was the same depth each time.
I used a simple method, I had a short piece of wood with two screws exposed by 15mm. After trowelling some fairly dry mortar onto the concrete, I used this piece of wood to drag the excess off, leaving an even bed. We wanted a relatively small 8mm joint between slates, and used standard plastic tile spacers to achieve this. For a natural product, the accuracy of the slates was equal to that of any manufactured tile, the calibrated thickness of 20mm near perfect. The thought of laying slate filled me with dread, but it was so unbelievably easy!
It did take quite a lot of cutting to finish around the edges, and around the back of the summer house. Pointing was very easy, because the slate is not porous, if you remove excess as you go, it doesn't stick or stain. In fact it is more like tiling, once the 'grout' was firm enough you could clean off the slate with a sponge.
Although we had bought in excess of requirement because of the pallet size, I always felt it wouldn't be too difficult to find a home for what remained. I kept ten full slates back, but sold everything else including all the off-cuts of whatever shape and size on EBAY, collected by someone living less than ten miles away.
Well, we were down to that final job, finishing the drive. We had long decided it was going to be tarmac, and sought quotes from various contractors. Because of price, reputation, and the fact he was a really nice bloke, we chose Henry Cooper,from Lanivet near Bodmin. I had wanted as fine a tarmac as was practical, tarmac with large chippings tends to have spaces in it that harbour muck and silt, but as we have to turn into the garages, Henry convinced me that 10mm SMA was the most sensible option. He would lay a base coat of 20mm dense bitmac, then a top layer of 10mm SMA, all compacted to 50mm.
Henry arrived with his crew as promised on 27th June. They hardly spoke a word to each other, just got on with their work, clearly each knew what they and the others had to do. It was good to see a bit of consideration too, putting sacking over the setts and the circle to make sure any tar was kept off them.
That was it, all completely finished.....what a great feeling!
We started breaking ground 21/09/12, and finished on 27/06/16, it took 3 years 9 months !
