Big Project 3 - The Brick Terrace

We await the manufacture of the new pool liner and completion of the other critical steps in the pool repair, our first major project of 2008; and Jesse has completed about 90 percent of the interior paneling and associated steps of project 2; we have project 3, our final big project of the year, already getting under way. This project’s focus is on repaving the brick terrace at the front of the house and repointing the retaining wall below it. It is work that we identified early on as needed and worked to get into the project queue as early as we could.

The brick terrace begins at the end of the gravel paths in the gardens and extends across the front of the house, past it on the wooded side. It totals about 40 feet in length, and it is approximately 10 feet wide, ending in an edge over the retaining wall and overlooking the pool. I enjoy sitting out here in the mornings with a cup of coffee – all four seasons – as there is good sun and the view looks down towards Beaver Run and the woods. Besides the great outdoor environment, it’s a good vantage point for wildlife viewing, including our nesting hawk pair and the pileated woodpeckers that live in the hollow.

The bricks were laid in a basketweave pattern, which was also used for the flooring in the main part of the cabin. In fact, the design is meant to give the illusion that the front room extends to the outside, or brings the outside in, when combined with the windowed wall of the house. (For additional information on brick paving, I found this website on a Google search: http://www.pavingexpert.com/blocks.htm#desn , which includes pattern descriptions, how-to’s, and construction methodologies.)

Over the years, the lack of maintenance on the roof and the absence of gutters along the back edge had led to extensive run-off erosion along the woods side of the house. That water ran onto the terrace and settled into the brick work, eventually flowing out through the stone wall. While the former owners repaved one of the 10 by 10 sections where the most significant settling had occurred, we don’t anticipate it was done well – there is not a good track record on these do-it-yourself projects – so at best all the little project did was postpone a larger one. In addition to the settling in this section, mortar cracks had appeared in the stone work below on the retaining wall.

On the other side of the terrace, there are hints of things that aren’t there any more – a couple of sawed-off beams suggest that some sort of staircase was built into the retaining wall, leading to a brick landing in the garden. More settling in the bricks has occurred over here, and the retaining wall on this corner needs attention around the old stairs.

The bricks here are so displaced by the damage that they can shelter wildlife. One morning in the early spring, as things were beginning to warm up on a day where the temperatures would reach 80, I saw a garter snake lounging in the sun…for non-herpetologists, these are non-venomous and generally not aggressive snakes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garter_snake) that are notable for bright yellow stripes that run lengthwise along their bodies. In my case the one I saw was a dark green and the yellow stripes were brilliant in the sun.

This is the one species of snake I can tolerate pretty easily, as a grade school friend caught one and kept it for a pet for a time, feeding it gold fish from a local pet store. To reassure future visitors, any snake with lengthwise stripes – not just at the Hawksbill Cabin, but in North America, generally – can be assumed to be non-venomous.

I understand that while the work on our paneling project has been winding down and only odds and ends are left, Jesse began work on the terrace this week. So we’ll see how things are going when we get out there this weekend.