Yesterday we finished out the area around the bench, where the formal garden flagstone walkway fades out into a mulch path. Not quite visible in this image is how the joinery loosens up towards the end of the flagging, as the stonework peters out.
Friday we built a bench in the Thyme yard. We cut the bench from a much larger slab. Our finished sitting stone is 6.5 inches thick and weighs somewhere around 700 pounds. The pencil lines indicate the layout for the supports below. The curved face of the bench takes advantage of the gentle curve of the stone path that runs by it.
The bench supports are castle blocks, very uniformly snapped chunks of Tennessee sandstone, each one weighing about a hundred pounds. Using two blocks below a single helps the supports distribute the weight more evenly into the ground. Note the gravel bed and the nearby tamper. Also note three different levels which were all getting good use. There was a torpedo level, a two foot and a four foot level that I switched between as I set the blocks. Amazingly enough, even though everything’s yellow, I still misplace stuff all the time.
There will be some additional flagging installed in front of the bench, at which point it will be about 17 inches tall, a very comfortable sitting height. It’s positioned to give a good view of the walkway, the wall and the garden beds. Planting a couple of larger shrubs behind it will enhance the privacy of the space.
This double-sided wall is the next major component of the Thyme Garden. The wall meanders along a garden bed, separating the planting areas creating a visual feature to attract the eye. It’s going to be small, with boulders installed to catch the ever-changing grade. All the material in use so far is sandstone, but it’s a wide array of types. There are some tan slabs with chocolate swirls left over from the walkway we replaced that cut like butter and there is some brittle, layered blue and orange stone that never, ever breaks the way I’d like it to.
Yesterday I hit a large square slab of Tennessee crab orchard with an eight pound sledgehammer. I struck it square in the middle and it broke into four smaller squares. After I pulled my new building stones out of the way, this perfect little puzzle was left.
This image shows a short section of the Thyme Walkway, just completed. Clicking on the photo will take you to a HUGE image of 100 square feet of the walkway.
The roof is on, the doors and windows are all in place, the sleeping loft is installed, the chimney cap is on, the floor is grouted and cleaned. The punch list gets shorter and shorter, as do the days. The cabin is 99% complete. This lovely door is super heavy, echoing the gravity of a stone house.
Votive candles adorn the numerous niches and shelves we built into the walls. One idea, abandoned as impractical, was to arrange candle shelves onto the fireplace wall in the form of the Big Dipper. Next time.
