Flagstone patio progress

I have slowly been making progress on that flagstone pation I'm building. It took a very long time to lay every flagstone. Leveling each one is tedious and difficult. Some of the stones are quit heavy. I'm sure an experienced person could do it faster, but I understand why it's so expensive to pay someone to do this. There is a lot of labor involved.

I didn't actually make more than a couple cuts, as I wasn't trying to make the joints too tight. (Going for that rustic look.) The hardest part was getting the slope right, becuase I had one part where it slopes up to landing outside a side door. This throws off the whole project, and it took a while to get satifactory results. Even so, I can see that water is going pool up a little in the middle. Not a really big problem, as thats where the drainage pipe runs.

After putting all the stones down, I started sweeping in about a dozen bags of gold granite fines. It takes many passes to do this. I empty a bag, sweep it over the patio, and try and compact the joints with whatever I can use. (Shoes, sticks, etc.) I then flood the area with water to help the compaction. A day later, I sweep, add more fines, sweep again. Eventually, the joints begin to look a bit solid. Now I have a very dirty patio. I need to wait for everything to dry before I sweep off the loose fines on top, then I have to clean the stones. Not sure what I'm going to do about that yet, I'll try with just a simple cleaning solution, but I may need to resort to acid.

When joints dry, they should, hopefully, be rock hard. I need to wait and see.

I have one progress photo. You can see a couple of the large planters I intend to put in after the patio is finished.