Week 23: Phase 4 - 2nd half of week.

 Not a lot doing Thursday, a little bit of prep work and tided up the garage. Slabs look good wet. 

Friday the final bag of sand was delivered about 11.30 and over Friday and Saturday we had a big push to get the work done e.g. all the slabs down. On Saturday with the mixer now at the top of the garden because we were running out of space we had to buy buckets and another 2 bags of cement. Saturday it rained a number of times for short periods of time and we were constantly back and forth covering up all the electrical stuff - the transformer and the mixer which is mains. There was nowhere to cut the slabs and I had to resort to cutting them outside the back gate almost in the road. Towards the end of Saturday it looked like we'd run out of cement and we had to mix the mortar with some of the left over MOT to bulk it out. The last slab went down at about 8.30 pm and we only had to throw away 1/2 a bucket of mortar.

Covering up the just laid slabs during one of several downpours during Saturday. 
10 - 15 mins later and the suns out again!

The garden doing its best impression of a building site.

No room for the work bench to cut the slabs, so had to move outside the back gate.

Getting there, but running out of room as we get squeezed into the final corner. At this stage it was looking touch and go whether the 2 bags that we'd bought during the day would be sufficient. 

Ben 'Scraping the barrel' literally to get enough mortar to do the last 4 slabs...

Done it! Finished at 8.30 pm. By the time we'd finished we'd had it with mixing cement, lugging slabs around and working dust and dirt. I'm going to leave it now for 48 hours or so to go off and then we'll get some pea shingle and Scottish Cobbles for the edges and some grout for the gaps. There's one sketchy bit - see the far end of the piece of wood on the slabs - the small square slab. The right-hand side gap is a bit big. The others have said leave it. I'm not so sure. 

The door shot and then off for a shower.