a series of hardscaping blunders

DevineEscapes

122333

I stayed at a very nice hotel in Connecticut last week. Fancy-schmancy up in here. My wonderful customers were very cool to put me up like this. Here I showed up, of course, with work boots on, as I don't own proper attire for such a classy joint...

Anyway, the hotel was beautiful and had awesome staff, but as a professional....I noticed some things about their hardscape. Hey, at least theyu didn't use polymeric sand.

Polymeric sand is particularly nasty stuff. It is a mixture of sand and an acrylic binder...just add water and you have microplastic infused sand-glue, a toxic goop in between your pavers. Anyway, I'm happy they didn't use it here. I'll make a post about polymeric sand next week.

As far as the other mistakes present here: I laughed, to keep from crying.

I offer a phone consultation service. For the past 10 years I've been helping home owners, and sometimes contractors, by providing 1 on 1 instruction, guiding them through their hardscape projects:

https://www.devineescapes.com/diy-flagstone-help/

With 28 years experience in hardscaping and masonry, plus 10 years providing this service, I am uniquely qualified to help you with your DIY patio, walkway, or other hardscape project.

work

construction

diy

hardscape

fail

LilyBellGiantess

Maybe it's just a Connecticut or New England hotel style thing, but this reminds me of The Simsbury Inn.

1 month ago |

thepandasbum

You must have "the eye" for it because i don't think i would have noticed any of that. I have a question for those tiny pieces that were inserted just to fill the gaps though: what's the proper way to fill them?

I'm not a brickie myself, but a stone mason. Still, I can see the entire project is beset by poor planning. To merely correct the small pieces, I'd suggest this: /a/JIABAAr

skipweasel

Once you start seeing things like this its very hard to stop. I suppose anyone with a speciality gets it. /gallery/BBskxeJ

RoboUnicornFishBalls

My block paved drive got jetwashed years ago but not sanded after, maybe by me.
Can i just kill the weeds and resand, leveling up any dips?

How wide are the joints between the blocks? Got a photo you can share?

Basically all like this and it's large so getting someone in is way over what i can afford.
I can graft and i can borrow a jetwasher.
Gap is about 3mm, just angled tops and full of moss

My recommendation is to pull the weeds, fill with stone dust, encourage moss to fill the space where the weeds were. Soil or sand can be used in place of the stone dust, if need be--but stone dust won't wash out as easy as soil and won't be attractive to ants, the way sand might.

DontNeedAWeatherManToKnowWhichWayTheWindBlows

Geez.. looks like a homeower-Harry kind of project. Except this one ain't a home. Resort-owner-Harry?

IDK, but I'd bet they hired a local professional. Probably a landscaper, not a mason, though I couldn't say for sure.

Watchoutwherethehuskiesgo

That most certainly is not a work of professional. God damn, how is that even possible to fuck up so hard! It looks like they tried super hard to invent a bunch of most twisted solutions for a super simple task.

A professional contractor--not a skilled mason, but a landscaping contractor.

Yeah, might be that there is a bit confusion with terminology - i'm not from your part of the world and here landscaper means that one is qualified in every skill starting from building terrain, walkways, lawns, planting and installing other things like drainage systems and whatnot. Sure, for more complicated tasks one might cooperate with masters of trade. But here we see most basic paving and it is poorly done. In any case there should have been someone that said "yeah, this is acceptable"...

Here landscapers are usually qualified to do a lot of different things, but they tend to fall short on hardscapes. In any case--what I've seen over many years in the trade, is that there's a ton of so called professionals doing really low quality work. I'm working to raise the standard and educate as best as I can.

Comments (16)