Finally got a chance to do an update on this.
Last Friday, I had a day off work and my parents took the little boy for the day so we could get on with the front garden and hopefully get it finished.
Firstly we went and picked up the whacker plate from the tool hire place, then we finished off spreading the aggregate we had had delivered earlier in the week we spread it as best we could aiming for about a 75mm layer to compact down to 50mm. However it seemed like we had nowhere near enough despite having been advised by the company we got the aggregate from. I called them up and explained the situation. It turned out that although I had said we wanted a 50mm compacted final layer they had only worked it out at a 50mm uncompacted layer...
I explained that I had taken the day off work specially and needed to get on. They said they could have the extra tonne with me within an hour and half so we sat down and started watching Iron Man 3. Eventually 2 1/2 hours later they turned up and tipped the extra out onto the garden and we could get on again.
Once it was spread out we began the task of compacting it. First we sprayed it with water then we got started with the whacker...
The beginning stage of the compacting:
Almost done:
Sadly as we were trying to get as much done as possible I completely forgot to take a pic of the finished compacted layer!!!
The next stage was another layer of terram to hopefully provied as much stabilisation of the ground as possible. We then put a thin layer of top soil over the whole area.
We then made a start on getting the grid down. It went down fairly easily though as it had been used previously some of the interlocking tabs were a bit damaged so we had to spend a good bit of time trimming them. Luckily my Bosch multitool made pretty light work of the cutting work. We decided to get as many of the whole pieces of grid in place as possible and then spend time cutting the awkward curves etc later.
As luck would have it my parents offered to keep the little man over night rather then me picking him up at 6pm as planned, which meant we had an extra couple of hours of working time before we lost the light.
We got all the whole sections down and started filling the grid with some soil to make it more difficult for anyone to steal overnight.
This is how it looked when we finally called it a day:
We had a busy next couple of days then on MOnday our next door neighbours offered to take the little man with them while they went round some garden centres so we could crack on. Naturally we took them up on the offer and got to work.
We set about cutting grids to fit into the cruved edge area of the drive and the end section where due to being slightly out of square we also needed to cut down some of the sections. Again my multitool made fairly light work of it and we got all the pieces cut and in place.
The worst part was cutting the grid to go into the recessed drain cover is it needed not only cutting to size but also needed the depth cut down all over and then it needed the pressed pattern of the base cut out too. It took a fair old time but soon was finished and we set the cover in place.
We then filled in the whole area using the best of the soil we had dug out. It is not the best soil as it is quite clayey but as it is only grass we will be growing in it, it should be ok and will help to give the grid lots of strength.
The final step was to give the soil a good soaking and sow the grass seed. Once this was done the area was complete!
The finished area:
The borders have been treated with roundup (well Wilkos own version) to kill off all the rubbish grass and weeds and other plants in them and once it's all dead we'll feed the soil and dig them over ready for planting and making them pretty.
Eventually we will have a fence put up along the front and down the side of the driveway to make it nice and neat and tidy but we can't afford that at the moment sadly.
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