踩出：12年的厨房
The finished product (small child not included)
“This is how my father taught me to do it,” saidJoe Salamone用笑容，自豪地在我们的新成品露台上看。“我不知道如何以其他方式做到这一点。”
It’s a good bet that he could have figured out another way, since it’s right in the installation instructions: lay a bed of crushed rock, then place pavers in dry sand. But Joe’s dad laid his stones in cement, so that’s what Joe does. The crew covered the rock bed with a layer of cement, then pounded the pavers into place, all painstakingly leveled and pitched to run rainwater away from the house. A sweeping of gray sand between thepaversfinished it all off. Best of all, it requires no maintenance, and that’s a concept I’ve come to love.
Step one of the patio process involved digging an outline of the project. Here's our first look at how our steps would fit into the overall design.
自从我们六个月前开始该项目以来，这座露台一直是古怪的东西，当建筑物部门拒绝了原始计划所示的甲板时。Our kitchenis more than three feet above grade level, and we wanted to split that height in two, making it easy to step down from kitchen to deck, then again from deck to lawn – two steps each, rather than four steps down from the door. (We loved that idea, since it never seems to fail that the minute we sit down to eat we realize we’ve forgotten the ketchup, or the napkins, or both.)
挖掘大纲帮助我们可视化我们的露台最终的样子。
但代码需要三脚安全缓冲在甲板的两侧，将其从栅栏和车库分开，并将大约75平方英尺的休息区切割出来。A grade-level patio had another problem: A landing area plus steps take up a LOT of horizontal space – by the time we’d get down to grade level, we’d be six feet away from the house, with a good 15 or 20 square feet of space under a stoop. To further complicate matters, the door faced a five-year-old ornamental plum tree that we love – throughout this whole project we’ve been resisting advice to take it out or move it, and we were committed to building our eventual甲板或围绕它的露台。
乔萨洛峰指示设置露台高度的水平线的弦线。
So our goals were:
- 使用露台摊铺机复制甲板的分割步骤思想
- 从车道到房子的车道和房子到露台，创建邀请行人流量
– End up with a landing and steps that were adequate for进入and exiting the house without taking up too much horizontal space.
A tall order, we knew.
The pavers arrive (some assembly required)
We had carefully planned for this: It looks like a small space, but there really is a two-foot walkway between the step and the edge of the patio.
那是乔进来的地方。Keithrecommended him as his go-to patio guy, and when Keith says this is the guy, I believe it. After all, one of the best things a good contractor brings to a job is good sub-contractors. And we weren’t disappointed. Joe made some small but important changes to my amateur sketch, and we were done—he understood just what we needed.
薄th the kitchen steps and the step down to the lawn have a bullnose edge
We differed a bit on the shape of the stoop. Joe recommended against what I had sketched, which was a five-sided landing area. That little angled cutoff at each corner, he said, would have a disproportionately large impact on the space; people on the landing could lose their balance if they stepped back to that little void. I held my ground for two reasons: one, that little negative space increased the width of the walkway between two sections of patio; and two, the shape better suited what I think will be the traffic pattern on the patio. (I also thought it echoed the shape of the gambrel roof on ourDutch Colonial，但这只是蛋糕上的糖衣！）
The dining area is almost done; the pavers are snaking their way toward the front section of the two-part patio.The raised patio required a thick bed of rock first, followed by a layer of cement to set the pavers.
Whatever the reason for Joe’s modesty, the finished patio is fabulous. A bullnose edge around all visible steps, including the wide expanse at the front of the house, was a grand finishing touch. (We can’t wait to come up with the border plantings that will put the cherry on top next spring.) And after watching the way these masons worked, I’m confident that I’ll be able to spend my retirement days lounging on that patio 20 or 25 years from now.
接下来：A Game of (Quarter) Inches: The 12-Year Kitchen.
有关户外生活的更多信息，请考虑：
Installing Bluestone Pavers On The Terrace
Blend Your Deck Into The Landscape
创造一个户外梦想厨房
