Paver Installation in Ballard

Something in the middle, and the way to decide is by counting rather than by eye. Roughly speaking you want enough units across the width to read as a surface rather than as individual pieces, without so many that the joints dominate. Very large formats in a small space produce a few slabs and a lot of visible edge, which fragments the area and makes it feel smaller. Very small units produce a dense grid that reads as busy. The reliable test is to mark out the actual unit footprint on the ground in the actual space and look at it from the door you will come out of.

Across the width rather than along the length, in most cases. Running the units along a long narrow space emphasises the length and makes the return read as a corridor; running them across breaks that up and makes it feel wider than it is. There is a practical argument in the same direction, since cuts then land at the two long edges where they are least conspicuous rather than at the ends where you look. The exception is where the return is a route to somewhere rather than a place in itself, in which case running with the direction of travel is the honest expression of what it is.

Mid-tone, usually, for reasons that are practical as much as visual. A very light surface in a shaded Seattle courtyard shows every bit of the algae film that a north-facing space grows for most of the year, so it needs constant attention to look the way it did when it was laid. A very dark one absorbs what little light reaches a small enclosed garden and can make the space feel closed in. A mid-tone with some texture hides seasonal film, reflects enough light to keep the space open, and looks broadly the same in February as in July, which in this climate is the more useful property.

By hand through whatever route exists, and it is the biggest labour line on a small Ballard job. Base rock, bedding sand and pavers arrive by the pallet at the kerb and go through a side gate or the house side by barrow, which means the volume of material is a schedule question as much as a cost one. Deliveries are sized to what can be cleared the same day, because a pallet cannot be left on the street overnight, and we arrange any street occupation permission needed. Where a gate is genuinely too narrow, the options are removing a fence panel temporarily, a conveyor, or in rare cases lifting over — and we establish which applies before quoting rather than on the first morning.