Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 12:46 pm
Hi hope someone can help. I've used this web site and the great information it provides for my most recent project so let me start by saying Thank You!
We recently laid a new patio out the back of the house. Because we did it ourselves (me and my dad), it took far longer than expected and of course went a bit over budget (however we still saved upto 2.5k on getting someone in), but now it's finished, I'm really pleased with it. We used Bradstone old town, and despite huge colour variations between batches, we've mixed it up enough to look good.
The last job was of course pointing/jointing the gaps between the slabs/flags and coping stones on the wall with a mortar joint. We used a mix of 4 to 1 of Sand and White Cement (Snowcrete) to get a good match to the colour of the slabs.
This worked well to start with, but we ran out of building sand on a Saturday afternoon. We'd previously bought sand from Travis Perkins as Dad had an account there and we got a good discount, but being Saturday afternoon, TP was closed, so we went to B&Q instead as we wanted to finish Sunday.
What we didn't think of was the massive colour variation in the sand, which in the bag looks quite similar to the TP sand.
It wasn't so noticeable until we had put in all the pointing that we had 1/3 of a patio pointed with nice grey joints, to match the slabs and 2/3 with not so nice reddish joints. Grrrrrrrrr.
So is there anything I can do to avoid angle grinding out 2/3 of the joints on my patio which is very very very time consuming? Not to mention unpopular with the neighbours' washing/ears.
Ideas please - PLEASE?
Jeff
We recently laid a new patio out the back of the house. Because we did it ourselves (me and my dad), it took far longer than expected and of course went a bit over budget (however we still saved upto 2.5k on getting someone in), but now it's finished, I'm really pleased with it. We used Bradstone old town, and despite huge colour variations between batches, we've mixed it up enough to look good.
The last job was of course pointing/jointing the gaps between the slabs/flags and coping stones on the wall with a mortar joint. We used a mix of 4 to 1 of Sand and White Cement (Snowcrete) to get a good match to the colour of the slabs.
This worked well to start with, but we ran out of building sand on a Saturday afternoon. We'd previously bought sand from Travis Perkins as Dad had an account there and we got a good discount, but being Saturday afternoon, TP was closed, so we went to B&Q instead as we wanted to finish Sunday.
What we didn't think of was the massive colour variation in the sand, which in the bag looks quite similar to the TP sand.
It wasn't so noticeable until we had put in all the pointing that we had 1/3 of a patio pointed with nice grey joints, to match the slabs and 2/3 with not so nice reddish joints. Grrrrrrrrr.
So is there anything I can do to avoid angle grinding out 2/3 of the joints on my patio which is very very very time consuming? Not to mention unpopular with the neighbours' washing/ears.
Ideas please - PLEASE?
Jeff