Patio’s progress...

The palapa set-up would all be done by now, but with our neighbors and building buddies Bob & Dot, we launched into installation of a patio across the back of our two palapas. We had built a dirt (calica) ledge there from the beginning and now it was time to finish it off. In our can-do spirit, Bob and I rolled up our sleeves and got to work. First the existing surface needed to be shoveled, raked, and dragged with a long board to bring it into a level contour. Then we drove my Chevy to the gravel pit down the road, and brought back two loads of pulvo (fine sand-like gravel.) This had to be trucked by wheelbarrow around from the front to the back and dumped, with more raking, leveling and packing.


The patio bricks were bought from an outlet in town, and delivery was scheduled for 2 days hence. We chose a rectangular shape (20 cm x 40 cm x 5 cm thick) By our measurement, we needed about 60 M2 to run right across. This added up to close to 10,000 lbs of bricks, more than my truck would like to carry. Even when the three pallets were delivered, we still had to wheelbarrow them 10 at a time around the back. As I knew we were going to be doing this project, I had watched a few programs about this on the DIY channel and it seemed simple enough.


This, unfortunately was not the case as the bricks were a rustic quality and they varied in thickness one to another, and each so one needed careful bedding. This was only accomplished by lots of crawling on our knees and back breaking bending over with a trowel as though we were archeologists examining an ancient ruin. On the second day we were able to bring in a local worker for a few hours and it went quicker with the three of us. Rafael had said he would be available to work the Sunday and Monday, but he was a no-show. I had totally exhausted myself and came down with a cold so I wasn’t much good for a few days. Still, with an hour here and a couple of hours there, we have the bulk of the patio installed.


We still have some of the finicky edges and a few loose bricks to reset, then add the final coat of beach sand to fill the little cracks, but it is looking great.