For the first couple of years we lived in our house on Greater Cleveland's "west side", this circular patio looked just fine. However, after the "Polar Vortex" winters of 2014 and 2015, many of these bricks were pushed out of position by something underneath. I first thought it was "frost heaving" and I figured the fix would be nothing more than my dismantling the patio, redoing the sand/gravel foundation and reinstalling the bricks. A loathsome, tiring process that I've over simplified but one that, with the help of two able bodied teenage sons, I could do myself and most importantly, do very cost effectively.
However, when I dismantled the patio I found that it was not "frost heaving" but a dense network of roots from that white birch that pushed the bricks up and out of position. Perhaps it was the freezing and thawing extremes that pushed the roots up but this whole mess had me wondering why there's a tree so close to a deck and patio; there's even another tree to the right of the circle. Incidentally, we're the third owners of this now twenty year old home. If you're not a home's original owner you inherit time bombs that previous owners had set years prior. And if you stay in a home you had built, you can lay times bombs that can go off on yourself years later too.
My first plan to fix the mess also included my grinding out the roots. However, landscapers and tree experts I (wisely) consulted with said that getting rid of the roots would kill the birch. One bricklayer suggested a foundation base over the roots and then we re-brick but in addition to the roots eventually destroying that too, I couldn't envision what it would look like. And if I can't "see something", it's probably not going to happen. The foundation over the roots would also be cost prohibitive.
I came to the conclusion that the only thing we could do was to "deck over" the area where the circular patio was. Great idea, right? Well, couple of problems. First off, my wife was opposed to the idea; she wanted me to somehow, someway keep some semblance of a stone patio. Second, despite her dissent, I couldn't find anyone that would even give me a quote on such a small project of either building a deck or doing an abridged stone patio. Lastly, but not leastly, when considering doing the job myself, while I've done some fairly significant home improvement projects in the past that most people would think twice about doing, I'd never built a deck before.
Not knowing what I was doing has never stopped me in the past so why should a small deck be any trouble? Adhering to my mantra that you can't let not knowing what you're doing stop you from getting something done, I ventured forth on "The Great Deck Project". Ventured forth with no plan as to what I was going to do not to mention having no idea how to do whatever it was I was about to attempt to do. My trump card was that if I got into a foggy "zone of creativity", I was confident that I would come up with at least something memorable. Of course I did as much research as I could on decks and deck construction but that can only amount to so much.
As far as any formal plans go, I did have to have some sort of a rough outline but anything I planned on became useless because there are tree roots everywhere here. And not just roots from the birch but from that smaller tree to the left. Besides, you know what they say about what God does when you make plans. Having improvised my entire life, this situation actually suited me just fine.
Throughout the process, though, my wife hovered over me constantly rejecting every design whim I came up with. My "whims" based in genuine concern that with, in essence, "the little deck" being little more than a big step over the old patio, anything built that didn't have any swag to it would result in a drab and uninspired slab of wood sticking out from the main deck. The wife was particularly vehement in her disapproval of this rounded part of the new deck that emulated the old stone circle.
This rounded part, which, incidentally, matches the circumference of the old patio, took most of a weekend to construct. For this, I enlisted the help of my (begrudging) wife and older son who are both far more mathematically and geometrically inclined than I am. I'm an artist, damn it, not a mathematitian.
After my son helped me figure out the radius and circumference of the semi circle he became inspired to further use his math skills and help me finish this thing. He loved that there was a practical application to his math knowledge and what's more, he gained the satisfaction of constructing something with your bare hands that only someone who's done so can appreciate.
While he was less than happy with the shear physicality of the work, honestly, this is back breaking, he loved the creative problem solving process. Of which there were many.
The weekends melted away in a fervor of sweat and muffled curse words as we struggled to make something, anything of what appeared many times to be nothing more than a shapeless blob of creaking, wobbling, pressure treated lumber.
Then, suddenly, by sheer will, something memorable came together that even my wife had to admit without hesitation, "was really something".
Just imagine what we could do if we had any idea what we were doing.
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