Stepping stone pavers

We finished the stepping stone pavers at the side of the house today. The roadbase had been put down a few weeks ago when we did the retaining wall. We then had to screed a layer of river sand for the pavers to be laid on.



Here's all the pavers laid. We ended up with a few left over as we spaced them more than we originally planned. Better to have too many than not enough, we can always use them elsewhere in the garden.



We then surrounded the pavers with blue metal gravel. This is good for drainage and we quite like the colour of it. We also made a border using some left over block pavers from the driveway.
The area under the window will be a flower bed.



Here it is all finished.

Retaining wall

We managed to get the side retaining wall finished today. It's a dry block wall which does not need morter to hold it together.

We had to dig a trench at the front of our block of land as this is the highest part. This enabled us to get the wall level all the way down the side of the house.



The wall was laid on a bed of Roadbase and levelled using river sand.



It's important to get the first coarse laid level.



After that the rest of the wall is easy as the blocks just lay on top of each other.



Here it is with four coarses laid and capping on top. The wall is four blocks high at the front and gradually steps down to one block high.