Cheaters!

We're running out of time to gather bricks, and we've found that the used, free brick market is really competitive. Like, I've emailed someone on Freecycle about bricks within an hour of them posting and they've been spoken for! We did pretty well, accumulating about 500 bricks almost free (one girl made us pay $5 for about 100 bricks).

Beginning to worry about our patio dreams, we decided to cheat and pay for some bricks if necessary. I went on craigslist and found several listings for old used bricks. Most were too far away or cost way too much. But there was one listing for a town about 15 miles away, with over 1000 bricks, asking $200. I sheepishly replied to see if they were desperate enough to take $100, and they were! So we went down there today to get most of them. They're from an 1812 house, and they look really old and full of character.

The wheelbarrow went for the ride, in case we were going to have to move them all around the year. It matches the car well, eh?

The guy working on the house was pretty skeptical of the Suby + truck combo for brick hauling, and thought it would take us 10 trips to get 1000 bricks. The Suby easily takes 200, as long as they're spread out (passenger floor too). His helper, who had hauled all these bricks up from the basement (I don't know why they were down there), came out to tell us how it was much more of a pain to haul them upstairs than what we were doing. Yup, probably right. We ended up with 800 today in one trip (2 vehicles) - not too shabby.

Our friend Seth very graciously assisted with the use of his truck and loaded and unloaded bricks on his morning off! He has earned the right to the first drink on the new patio, and probably has a bit of good karma headed his way. Thanks!!!

This weekend we're enlisting Mom & Dad to help haul the last few hundred from that yard, and then the Patio Brick-O-Meter is officially retired!