Finally Flagstone: Laying our Flagstone Pathway

Just after Labor Day, you will recall we put in the glorious sod.   What a difference it made!  However, we were still walking on uneven, haphazardly placed, random-height flagstone where the eventual "professional" flagstone walkway would tie the deck stairs into the driveway.

Post sod.

So on September 19-20 I put my truck to use and picked up a few more pieces of flagstone and some mortar sand.

Low-ri-der.

I thought the project would go quickly.  I always think projects will go quickly.  I should not think.

Doing this the right way took two days.  First, I excavated the soil to the proper level.

Then, I needed to make sure there was a compacted base of sand. 

The next step was the most time consuming and most exciting: fitting the pieces into the puzzle border - I live for this stuff.

I wanted to make the surface as flat as I could and level from side to side with drainage toward the driveway.  Plus, I had to make sure the top of the flagstone at the base of the stairs was 7 1/4" (+/-3/8") below the top of the last stair tread.  That distance is the rise between the other treads of the deck stairs, which is apparently a very big deal to our nit-picky building inspector, who we didn't want to give reason to cite us in violation and hold up our impending final inspection on the addition.

So I got them all laid out with about 4 little pieces to spare.

Then I transferred them to the driveway in the same pattern.

 

And then, finally, put them in place and filled the spaces between with sand. It looks awesome and is so much safer!

To top it off, I transplanted some Scottish moss from our front yard to the interstices. I hope it will fill next year.  The plants will help keep the sand in place and look way cool.

That was a fun couple of days.  Now we have matching pathways in the front of the house and the back of the house.  Cohesion, baby, cohesion.