He had a vision: a flagstone patio, a gravel base, a hammock strung between a post and a leaning oak. His wife didn’t think he could pull it off. So he took it to a landscaping community to settle it once and for all. The thread did settle it — just not the way he was hoping.
Where It Started: The Plan He Brought to the Internet
The backyard corner was a blank slate in the rough sense of the word. A weathered wooden platform sat rotting on bare dirt, patchy weeds crept across the ground, fence panels were halfway through being replaced, and a massive oak leaned dramatically over the whole scene.
The homeowner, posting as TheBayWeigh, had a clear picture in mind. Tear out the platform, lay a flagstone-and-gravel base in its place, and hang a hammock, anchored on one side by a post he’d sink himself, on the other by the oak. He posted it under a title that told you everything about the dynamic at home: “Help me prove my wife wrong.” He also admitted, in his own words, that he hates following directions.
His wife had doubts about his DIY abilities. The landscaping community took her side almost immediately.
The Reality
Strike ONE: The One Thing the Whole Thread Agreed On
The top comment was three words long: do not use pea gravel. It pulled fifteen hundred upvotes, and the replies underneath it read like a support group.
One commenter described pea gravel as a constant mess that spills out from between flagstone and never stays where you put it. Another offered the line the thread will probably be remembered for that pea gravel is the glitter of landscaping: once it’s in your yard, you find it everywhere and never fully get rid of it. Someone else compared it to a small-scale ball pit. The problem, in plainer terms, is that pea gravel is round and small, so it never locks into place and migrates endlessly.
Pea gravel is the glitter of landscaping. Once you have it, you find it everywhere.
The fix that kept coming up instead was decomposed granite or crushed stone, angular material that actually compacts and stays put. One strike against the plan, and the thread was just getting started.
Strike TWO: The Post Problem His Wife Was Probably Right About
The hammock post was where the thread got genuinely technical, and where the plan ran straight into physics.
A hammock doesn’t pull straight down on a post, it pulls sideways. One detailed reply explained that this lateral force is what rips standard fence posts clean out of the ground, especially once Central Texas clay gets wet. The advice was specific: a six-by-six treated post, buried three to four feet deep, in a hole belled out at the bottom like a mushroom and filled with concrete. Skip that, and the post leans toward the middle of the yard within a month.
Then came the local knowledge. Multiple commenters from the area, Cedar Park, where TheBayWeigh happens to live, pointed out that you can’t dig a foot down in those neighborhoods without hitting limestone. Getting a six-by-six four feet into that ground by hand is, as one put it, a vaya con Dios situation.
The takeaway: Hammocks generate lateral pull, not downward weight. A post that would happily hold a heavy planter can still be torn sideways out of soft ground which is exactly why the depth and the concrete footing aren’t optional.
The Good News: What the Pros Actually Recommended
Buried in the thread was a working landscape designer from the Austin area, and the advice was the most useful thing in the post.
Bigger flagstones beat smaller ones, they’re more stable, they leave less gap for weeds, and they make it easier to place furniture. For the base, the designer pushed back gently on the crushed-rock road-base advice: road base essentially turns the area into solid impervious cover, while compacted decomposed granite stays stable and still lets water drain through. The proof point was a job they’d built over ten years ago with a couple of inches of compacted DG under large flagstones, they’d recently gone back, and barely a stone had shifted.
The consensus method, stripped down: excavate a few inches, lay and compact a proper base, seat the stones, and install rigid edging around the whole perimeter so nothing migrates. And whatever fills the joints, accept now that weeds will come, and decide your plan for them before you start, not after.
Strike THREE: The Plan B the Internet Talked Him Into
For all the technical detail, the most-repeated piece of advice was also the simplest: skip the post entirely and buy a freestanding hammock stand.
It came up over and over. No digging, no concrete, no fighting limestone, no post slowly leaning into the yard. One commenter who lives nearby said their wooden hammock stand cost about $70 shipped and has lasted since 2018, and added a few hard-won notes, metal stands feel cheap and rust out, and in Central Texas you’ll want a mosquito net on the thing regardless of where it sits.
TheBayWeigh, to his credit, took it well. By the end of the thread he’d conceded he’d probably end up getting a standalone hammock after all.
So… Did He Prove His Wife Wrong?
Set the plan against the verdict and the answer writes itself. He came looking for backup and left with a different patio base material, a warning about his post plan, and a Plan B that skips the hardest part of the project entirely.
| Pea gravel base between the flagstones | Overruled |
| DIY hammock post sunk into the yard | Talked out of it |
| Flagstone patio over a compacted base | Approved, with conditions |
| “I hate following directions” | Not advisable here |
The patio idea itself was sound, permeable flagstone over compacted decomposed granite is something the pros genuinely build. But the pea gravel was out, the DIY post was a fight against limestone he didn’t need to pick, and the hammock stand he resisted was the answer all along.
As one commenter put it, with the kind of clarity only the internet provides: your wife is right. We have no idea what about, but trust us, she is RIGHT.
Images and original post by u/TheBayWeigh. View the original thread here. Shared with credit.
