Trash Pad: Part 1

Holy moly, I can't believe it has been a month since we've last posted... or done anything worth posting about.  We were in New York for a week, but other than that, I guess we've just been super lazy lately.  Even though it was 94 degrees today, we forced ourselves outside to begin a project we sort of began months ago.

As you know, we have no shed or garage or outdoor storage, except for our small under-the-addition space that we spruced up a month ago with some lattice renovations.  We do have two big ol' bins for our trash and recycling that just sit next to the house and generally look ugly.  In a small effort to make them look a little nicer, a few months ago I wandered into the overgrown space to the right of our house where someone had thrown a bunch of paver rock things.  With their random shapes, I thought I could piece them together and form a cute landing pad for the bins to sit on.  Unfortunately, they were just a bit too random and no matter how I moved them around, it just didn't work out right.  Plus, they are all different widths and I suppose I could have dug down to make them level, but who wants to do that much work?  Over the last couple of months, rain showers and the weight of the bins helped push the stones more firmly into place, but it was still kind of ugly.

My sad attempt at a rustic/natural looking trash pad.

The bins on their sad trash pad.

Eventually, we'd like to go all out and build ourselves a trash shed, inspired by this article on the This Old House website.  Look how cute it looks:

To start off, though, we decided to replace the pad with something... better.  So, we headed out to Lowe's yesterday afternoon to check out our paver options.  I wanted to go with something cute and fancy, but realized once we build the shed, no one will ever see them, so why pay extra?  We just picked up some cheap, plain concrete squares, a couple bags of patio and paver base, and a tamp.

Our first step was to utilize slave-puppy labor and have Chewie haul away all the old stones.

Then John had the horrible task of digging down about an inch in our nasty clay/rocks to help get a nice, flat surface.  This was not made any more enjoyable by the 94 degree heat.  Luckily, we have our oaks to provide shade, so at least it wasn't in full-on sun.

Kinda looks like a grave...

Our next step was to spread out the patio and paver gravel base for the bricks to sit in.  We dumped out our two bags of that, spread it around with the metal shovel, and John went crazy with the tamp.

Dump...

Spread...

Tamped!

We then started laying down the bricks, only to realize they weren't lying as flat as we'd like them.  After some discussion, we decided we probably needed a bit of paver sand, so it was off to Home Depot.  Following the same technique of dump, spread, and tamp, we were left with what looked like a giant graham cracker crust.

Once it was all smoothed down, John and I carefully placed the bricks and stomped on them a little to get them in their place.  Here's the new pad:

Not much to look at really, but like I said, it'll eventually all be enclosed with our awesome trash shed.  Until then, at least our bins have a nice, even surface to sit on.

So, that's not a very exciting project to come back with after a month long hiatus, but it's one more thing marked off the list.  Plus, it's only the beginning of a three-day weekend, so who knows what else we'll force ourselves to get around to doing. :)