One of the things about summer is it creates opportunities to drag out projects in the yard; which is not a bad thing.  I finished the “mosaic” installaion a couple of weeks ago after many absolutley wrong algebra calculations, trips to Home Depot, and 100 degree temperatures.  I say “mosaic” because I ended up going with pavers instead; the mosaic was proving to be too intricate and I didn’t think I’d have enough time to do it properly, so I’ve sidelined that project for a bit.  One of the many challenges I had with this project was estimating the amount of materials.  This is especially challenging because I am algebraically challenged.  It took me four, yes, four times to pass algebra 1 with a C; once in high school and three times in college.  Something about adding letters into math threw me off early on.  So here I was trying to calculate the area of a triangle in my back yard to determine how much gravel and sand I would need as well as how many pavers.  You’ll notice in the photos that I severely miscaluclated everything.

For example, I originally thought I’d need ten 50 lb. bags of sand, six bags of gravel, and about 180 pavers…that was  before I realized I had excavated too deep.  I didn’t discover I had excavated too deep until I poured out and tamped down the gravel.  At this point it was too late to put more dirt back in becuase there was no way I was going to take out the gravel.  This error led to me acutally using about 20-25  fifty pound bags of sand.  After putting the bags on a cart at Home Depot, hoisting them into my truck, then unloading them at home I didn’t need to go to the gym.  On one of my sand expeditions to Home Depot a friend of mine saw me loading up a cart and asked, “Are you building a sand box or something? Har-har!” I also got quite a workout getting the pavers.  I had estimated I’d need about 180 pavers; turns out twice as many were needed.

Despite my miscalculations I think things turned out well.  Check it out: