The building works here may be done but that doesn’t mean we’ve run out of work. We have painting to do, lighting fixtures to buy (there’s currently no lighting in the entry hall, or the stair hall, or the walk-in closet), books and bookshelves to move from the bedroom to the office/library…

This evening, after both kids were asleep and our productive time began, we got started on laying stone on the flat bit of ground between the garden stairs and the stairs to the porch. It was already paved before, but when the new porch got built, the upper flight of stairs became wider and moved slightly, so we ended up with an unpaved gap.

We chose paver blocks that come in a mixture of sizes, Fantasi Antik. We spent an hour and a half this evening designing a layout for the stones that we can live with.

Both Eric and I are “pattern people”: if there is a visual pattern, accidental or intentional, we cannot help noticing it. And if that pattern is in a place where there isn’t supposed to be one, it will keep catching our eye and irritating us. Like a visual itch. It often happens with cheapish printed products – cheap laminate flooring, fabric, wallpaper – where the pattern repeat is too short.

So we wanted to make very sure our paving is sufficiently random. In particular, no too-long unbroken lines, and no too-large rectangles of blocks. For example the long unbroken line down the middle of that marketing photo above would be a clear no-no.

It was almost like a computer game. Except with pixels of 70x70mm, weighing over half a kilogram each. And instead of trying to make order, we tried to make randomness. Sort of an anti-Tetris.