Next up on the Honour Roll of former Celtic Tiger All-Stars due a reunion tour would have to be the Sandstone patio. Suffering from credibility issues every bit as debilitating as those of the deck the lesser spotted sandstone patio has not been heard of since 2006 when it was effectively banished from civilised society such were its image problems.
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| Less Is More With Sandstone |
Admitting you were considering having one installed was the social equivalent of proclaiming that you were heading off to Alaska on a baby seal clubbing expedition. A bit like the deck, sandstone was particularly adept at looking great for approximately six days after it was laid. After that, not so much.
The primary issue was the fact that it seemed to be a magnet for all manner of residue and staining. Autumn would come, the leaves would fall and leave your beautiful patio looking like a cross section through a barnbrack. Not to mention the havoc the frost would play with the joints; rupturing, cracking, unravelling and generally looking like one of Shane McGowan’s orthodontic x rays. Throw in the familiar and, it seems, compulsorily lethal propensity to send users skating across its surface á la Nancy Kerrigan without the grace, poise or control and you had a positively prohibitive cocktail of game changing defects.
So what’s changed? Well nothing really apart from a post boom penchant for moderation. Boom years sandstone patios were just too darn big, necessitated too much maintenance and ultimately and inevitably bred too much frustration and malcontent.
We’re all about the subtlety and selectiveness now. Forget about a patio that doubles as a five a side soccer pitch, a judiciously placed and modestly sized bit of stone paving can be every bit as effective.
We can also avoid some of the obvious mistakes of the past; a back garden surrounded by mature Leylandii is no setting for a natural stone patio,it will be coated in nasty residue in a month. Shallow sand and cement joints disintegrate in the frost, simple as that. Avoid this by leaving scope for deep joints and using a premixed jointing product such as Rompox. Make sure it is adequately pitched away from the building to avoid water collection and resultant winter slipping hazards. It’s a natural material and consequently comes in widths which are not uniform. Therefore you need a talented and patient installer who will negotiate the vagaries of variations in thickness to provide a uniform, level finished surface of a consistent plane and not the mini Giant’s Causeway effect of yore. Once it’s installed give it a thorough cleaning and seal it, yes seal it. It makes cleaning and sweeping so much easier and will preserve its youthful good looks longer.
The same applies to natural stone of every hue, it just seems that we managed to develop a particular obsession with sandstone. Sandstone, mind you, which originated in India and circumnavigated the globe a couple of times in a shipping container before finally coming to rest in a patio centre near you. This is another habit we could do with breaking.
Let’s think local; there are any amount of indigenous stone suppliers who can provide product every bit as eye catching as the Indian sandstone that produced a megatonne of carbon getting here. Off the top of my head I can think of quarries in Wicklow, Kilkenny, Tipperary,Laois, Mayo, Clare and Galway that produce limestone, sandstone and quartz which is head and shoulders above anything we could import. And we’re bringing it in from China? Crazy doesn’t begin to cover it. Next thing you know we’ll be importing beef. Oh wait….
Christmas is upon us, Paddy’s Day hot on its heels, followed closely by Easter. Before you know it you’re staring down the barrel of another Summer with nowhere to host a maypole dance to celebrate the solstice. Get it sorted; with a nice bit of native stone.
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