Pavers (and Granite)

Yay! The pavers guys are here today and doing prep work. Stephan dropped off some equipment yesterday, and they were here using the very, very loud concrete saw by 7:30 this morning, to my neighbors' dismay.  It also set up a cloud of dust that prompted the neighbors two doors down to call me, so they'll be using the water hose from now on.

Since way back in the first few days we had decided to drop the level of the pool down four inches (see February's blog entry "Framing"), the lanai has been getting higher and higher.  I had no idea there was so much slope on the lanai floor, but the side was turning into about a foot drop next to the retaining wall.  So much for putting another screen door on that side.  Stucco (matching the retaining wall), or paint, or pavers?  We decided that the raw edge of the lanai needed something, so they're lining it with vertical pavers and it looks good.

Also, the trench drain is going in and will tie in to some sort of drainage system.  Not sure if we want deck runoff in the the cistern, so we'll probably need to come up with some extra drainage lines.

They also need to place the holders for the hand rail. The PB's guys made a jig (in lieu of the actual extended-P railing) so that we could figure out where it's going to go. Since they were bonded to the pool, we had about a foot of wiggle room to move them around. Normally it would be centered perpendicular to the top step, but I think that's too close to the lanai door, so we're going to offset it away from the door, so that it will be to the left side of the top step. Since the step angles away from the corner, there is still plenty of space on the far side of the railing. This is hard to describe. Pictures should explain it.

Also, went to the granite place to pick out the chunk for the spillover. Rick made the template a couple of days ago and I had a spare blue waterline tile and extra coping brick to bring along. There's a lovely blue granite there, but the blue color is off - more purple blue - so I'm pretty sure this is going to be a contrast sort of situation rather than a matching situation. If it's to match, it has to match exactly, but contrast is wide open. In the back of my mind, I'm still thinking about that gorgeous black granite with deep blue iridescent spots that I saw at the Pebblesheen house back in February (see Tiles #3) The granite lady, Maria, says it might be Blue Volga, but I just think it's kind of funny that granite has names, like something manufactured, when it's really a rock and can have miles of variation. So I don't like granite all that much. It's pretty. Just not in my house.

Anyway, the really black granites are dark and harsh. There is lighter black, maybe silvery-gray granite with blue-silver iridescent streaks in it, called Blue Pearl. It's more speckly, but I think it contrasts nicely with the tile & coping. The Lealman Fire Inspector held up the tile & coping brick against a giant slab of Blue Pearl so I could take this lousy picture with my phone camera.


Fortunately, Maria gave me a small chunk to take home and check out against the pool.  The camera angles and sunlight make it pretty hard to capture the iridescent qualities, but I think you can get the idea.  The shiny spots are more silver than blue, but at just certain moments you get a quick blue glint.  I'll try to take a picture during a different time of day to see how it captures on film (so to speak).