Tools + Area Calculator + Materials = A Great Walkway

Laying your own gravel or wood chip walk in your yard is a feasible project as long as you are willing to spend the time required to do it correctly. Much of the work in creating a beautiful and functional path is in proper preparation. The tools that you will need are few, and the materials can be purchased locally in the correct amounts computed by an online area calculator. With these things, some hard work, and the rental of a drum roller or tamper, you can have that walkway finished in a single day.

The Steps to Creating a Great Gravel Path 

1. When preparing the ground for the creation of the path, you will need string, stakes, and a level.  Mark out the edges of the path with stakes and string, measuring carefully to ensure that the path is the correct dimensions and that the path drops slightly for drainage. The correct slope is a loss of 1/8 to ¼ inches per foot.
2. Once you have the land staked out, you can begin to dig out the dirt, grass, or soil to the correct depth. You are going to add four inches of gravel and two inches of sand, so remove a little more than six inches of material.
3. Once you have the material removed, you will need to decide on an edging. The border edge of your path can be made up of treated timber, bricks, or precast concrete pavers. If you are using bricks, you will need to dig out a trench on either side of the walk to house the bricks—short edges up—to act as a border.
4. Lay the border into place, and (in the case of bricks) add sand and soil to hold them in place. Once the edge is down, place your two inch layer of sand along the entire walkway.
5. Using an appropriate sized piece of wood, screed (level out) the sand. Once this is done, wet the sand so that it settles into a more compact consistency.
6. After the sand is ready, cover it with landscape fabric to prevent weeds from growing through.  If you need to abut pieces of fabric together, make sure there is at least one foot overlap.
7. Now you are ready to pour the gravel or wood chips over the fabric. Once the covering is down, level it out with a rake and them tamp or roll it down with whatever tool you have rented.

Using your tools, your area calculator, your materials, and a little work, you can have a great looking path in as little as a single day’s work.

The Disadvantages of In-Wall Speakers

Everybody wants their home theater room, or whatever room they watch television and movies in, to look and sound awesome. Whether you’re designing the room yourself or using someone like Warner Audio & Video to create the room for you, there are some major decisions to be made. One of those decisions involves choosing a type of speaker for the room. Speakers take up space in the room and affect its looks, but more importantly they will determine whether the sound of your home theater system knocks you off your socks. Many people are tempted to go with in-wall speakers, but there are reasons to think twice about it.

Advantages

There are a couple of advantages of in-wall speakers that make them tempting. First, they take up very little space in the room. If you have a smaller room that’s already crammed full of furniture, adding a large speaker system can make it feel even more cramped. Second, because the speakers are in the walls, all of the wiring goes through the walls. This can make the room look cleaner and prevents any accidents that might occur from people tripping on cables or wires. The advantages are nice, but you have to weigh the disadvantages as well.

Sound Quality

In-wall speakers typically can’t compete with the sound quality of their free-standing or wall-mounted counterparts. In-wall speakers have a drastically different form from other speakers, and the form of a speaker affects its performance.

Mobility

Another disadvantage of in-wall speakers is that once they are installed, it is very difficult to move them. You are essentially creating a large hole in your wall or ceiling and running wires to it. Should you decide at some point that you want to rearrange your room, you’ll have to patch the old hole and reroute all the wires, whereas with regular speakers you could simply unplug them, move them, and then plug them back in.

Price

Another disadvantage of in-wall speakers, assuming you don’t have unlimited funds, is that in order to get good sound quality, you’ll have to spend a lot of money. There are in-wall speakers on the market that will knock your socks off; they’re just significantly pricier than other speakers of comparable quality. So, before you or Warner Audio & Video start setting things up, make sure you’ve chosen the right type of speaker.