Demolition begins on the old patio.
Construction began with some destruction. I’d agreed to knock down the porch before the crew from Father Nature Landscapes, so the week before they were do in, I put on my safety glasses and ear protection and took a sledgehammer to the porch. It surprised me how easily it came down. After cutting its remains into station-wagon sized chunks, I hauled the porch to the dump. Continue reading
The final plan included a brick patio, expanded bed, and new covered porch.
Having (finally) decided to replace our decrepit patio, we defined our requirements–appropriate for our Craftsman bungalow, follow roughly the same footprint, and a new covered porch–we iterated through variations on the same basic idea until we settled on a final plan. We preserved the same basic footprint, slightly expanding the side bed and pulling out a small paved section next to the house to create a new bed. Continue reading
The patio on final walkthrough in March of 2007.
We’ve been thinking about a new patio for years. The original featured multiple coats of peeling paint over cracked concrete. Topping the patio was a functional if ugly covered porch. Working on other projects, we continued to give the patio some thought, especially when nice weather pulled us outside. But it stayed low on the list. Until this summer.
A J bolt pierces a brick at the edge of the new patio.
God or the devil may or may not be in the details, but there is definite satisfaction. We recently had our old patio replaced. As our first major project we hired out, it was a little odd to not be doing it ourselves. I did, though, manage to leave a little work for myself. Part of the patio plan includes a new covered porch, which required new footings for a couple of posts. The crew from Father Nature Landscapes dug the holes and placed a couple of Sonotubes, then bricked around them. The rest was up to me. Continue reading
One of the side sections. Deciding how and where to adjust the fence to meet the slope of the yard required quite a bit of head scratching.
To keep fence construction manageable we tackled the three sections (two sides and back) one at a time. Construction began with a materials list–gravel, concrete, pressure treated posts, cedar, and stainless steel screws–and a trip to Mill Outlet Lumber. Then it was time for demolition. Taking a chain link fence down is relatively easy, but posts set in concrete are another matter. If the posts weren’t located where new posts would go in, I cut the posts off with a reciprocating saw where they met concrete. Digging out the posts that had to go was less pleasant.
The fence in potentia.
There’s a surprising amount of debate online about whether posts should be set in concrete or alternating levels of dirt and gravel. I opted for a base of about 6 inches of gravel in a thirty inch posthole, then concrete. To avoid showing the perforated faces of the pressure treated posts, they were wrapped in cedar once the concrete had set. To avoid visible fasteners, I screwed the fence rails to the posts using pocket holes drilled with a Kreg jig. With the rails in place, the infill went in fairly quickly.
In another departure from the source design, only a few sections were topped with the gable roof. To produce the gable, two boards were butted together at a 90 degree angle and screwed together. Other posts were capped with a simple 7″ x 7″ beveled cap. I ripped a 2″ x 8″ to width, then cut it into squares. The bevel was cut on the table saw with the blade set to about 7 degrees. After sanding, the caps were fastened to the posts using silicon caulk.
The back section of fence.
Here’s an interesting variation on the the shadow box fence (where the infill boards are placed on alternate sides of the rails) taken in Kamakura outside Tokyo. Using 5 rails here instead of the more typical two or three imparts the impression of a basket weave. Metal flashing protects the top from water although the wood has been left to weather naturally.
A shadow box fence in Kamakura
A post-and-beam fence/wall in Tokyo. The base of the wall is raised above a concrete foundation. The bottom infill is bamboo, the top a wooden lattice with a narrow strip of plasterwork below the tile roof.
A wall of bamboo, wood, plaster, and ceramic.
Here’s another timber frame gable, this one forming a roof over a gate in Kyoto. The gate is a rather plain lattice, but the roof presents an interesting mix of shaped boards and rough wood.
Roofed gate. Kyoto
Detail of the roof.
A bamboo fence guards the edge of a stairway on the grounds of Naritasan Shinshoji Temple in Narita. Exposed like this, the bamboo will deteriorate and need to be replaced. You can buy artificial bamboo to replicate the look without the maintenance.
Short bamboo fence. Narita.
Detail of fence.
Exterior gate. Kyoto.
Frame and panel construction using an unidentified softwood. Unfinished.