In a nutshell, my old deck sucked, so I had it ripped off (as in, strapped to a truck, and yoinked off the back wall). Only question is what to replace it with. After some consideration I’ve decided to try a rock patio. It’s something I have never done before and should up the resell value of the place, not to mention last a lot longer than another deck.

I’ll document progress on this post, and hopefully it won’t be too much of a disaster.

Step 1, 2011_09_11: Materials

First, where to get the rock? Purchase it? Don’t think so. Not when the entire region is one big limestone plateau. Besides, there is something more genuine about rock not bought from a hardware store.

Fortunately I knew a good place to get some from a previous kayaking excursion. The Licking River and its South Fork confluence in Falmouth is loaded with rocks. There’s an island bed nearly a mile long made up of easily accessible, large and perfectly flat rock that would fill the bill nicely. Naturally things didn’t go as planned. This time of year the Licking is usually low and the South Fork dry, but when I arrived at the confluence both were at normal flow leaving me no way to get at the island of rocks I wanted.

Luckily after some further exploration I found a bank side rock bed further upstream. It wasn’t nearly as large, but still had far more than my truck could carry. Step one is complete.

…Now the easy part is over. Step two coming soon.

DC