Helping hands

On our block we have several neighbors in a similar situation as us, old home needing constant maintenance, and lots of landscaping, uh, opportunity. They are also pleasant company. So we have decided to take turns helping each other with projects. Kind of the old rural model where you'd go to one farm this week and help with harvest or build a barn, etc., and next week everybody would come to yours and help out there.

We started at our house :-) Putting in flagstone. It's a good project for this kind of thing. Mostly labor, not specialized skills needed, and we could get to a milestone where we could feel like we really accomplished something.

Here is what things looked like before Tim, Nina and Ben showed up at 9 AM. Jae and I had done most of the digging in advance, and had set the stones in one small section to get the idea for what we were doing.



That's Tim and Ben in the background, leveling sand. Tim in the blue shirt, Ben in the yellow. Me in the foreground, doing the last bit of digging. Jae is taking the pictures.



Further along. Jae in back placing a stone. Tim and Ben again in foreground, placing and leveling stones.



Approaching the end of the day, about 2 PM. Huge progress. That's Nina and Ben. Somehow Nina only made it one picture, but don't let that fool you, she was there all day :-) When we quit, all the stones were in place, with some leveling and filling in between left for me and Jae to do next weekend. We are thrilled.



The final stages will be getting some crusher fine to fill in between the stones. Also, the feature in the middle of the wide part of the flagstone will be a compass rose, a la Jae. We are so close to there.

And we are so on the hook for helping Ben and Nina and Tim at their houses.