It's a good thing I'm not getting paid by the hour - but at least I'm learning how to make mistakes in my first alt.home.repair sandstone tile & flagstone walkways:
First lesson learned was to wear better gloves! The tips of the middle & pointer fingers of both hands are worn through the skin already!
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Another lesson learned was that 5-gallon buckets are just too small to mix mortar well! I will go to Home Depot tomorrow to buy a concrete pan! What I did learn was that buckets are still needed. Lots and lots of buckets!
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Another lesson learned is that I made the mortar far too wet! And, I put far too little in the first, second, and third time I tried! And I didn't make enough. Given that, the sandstones were at first too low, and then they were sinking in the mud. There must be a fine line between lousy and just right - and I'm no where near it!
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In addition, forms are MANDATORY! I tried doing it without a form, but, in the middle of laying the first two stones, I found myself hastily building a form just to hold the two inches of mortar back!
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Along that vein, it's helpful to have two jobs going at once. The first job is the critical one. The second is simply a place to dump the extra mortar... perhaps to fill the bottom tier of a form. With a second job handy, I don't feel so badly making more mortar than I need.
Another thing I learned is that the location of the sandstone laid out as flagstone is vastly easier than choosing the flagstone to be then cut into tile to fit a defined space. Here's the flagstone, for example, that I very roughly laid out in a semicircle out of the waste products left over from the tiling job:
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I'll leave it with those of my lessons, for now. I'm sure tomorrow will bring more!
The most painful of all the lessons was that these leather gloves, while fantastic for outside work, stink for working with wet concrete!
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The only good news is that I now have no more fingerprints - so - I guess I can rob a bank and not get caught (as long as I don't bleed on the bank counter)! :)
Thanks for all your help. It looks sooooo easy in the videos. But they don't tell you all this stuff!