Walk way that is! Darling Hubby and I finished redoing our front walk this weekend and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. The old one was a crumbling concrete mess and looked down right terrible. Here is a picture that was taken in early 2004 (before we sided over that hideous yellow color) that shows an already crumbling mess…add 5 years to that and you can imagine what it looked like a couple weeks ago before we broke it all up.
When we first moved into this house in 2003, there were 3 very large stone slabs laying between the driveway and the neighbor’s fence. They served no purpose, aside from giving the old neighbors ramshackle fence a little more stability at the bottom…lol) I don’t even think I have a picture of them…they were that insignificant to us. When Darling Hubby and I started discussing options for repairing the front walk way, I made mention of the 3 stones and when we took measurements, we found they were practically perfect for the space. They were a little smaller width wise, but it was only a couple inches and we decided to take out the bricks and other stones that made up the side walk way that led from the driveway to the main walk way since it wouldn’t match up well. We’d planned to just lay the stone slabs flat and basically replace the front walk, but my friend Rose gave me a good idea to make them into steps. It actually turned out better to make steps since the last stone was a bit longer than the concrete slab the construction guys poured when our sidewalks and curbs were replaced in 2007. We had no good way to cut the stone slab to make it even so overlapping worked out well. Plus it will keep the rugrat kid from down the street (who can’t be but a year or 2 older than Bug), who often has no adult supervision, from riding his wagon down my walk way…he attempted that once but quickly moved on when he saw me watching him from my front door…he hasn’t set foot on my property since. Anyway, we ended up using the bricks from the side walk way area to make the steps…nothing goes to waste around our house! lol
Here’s the finished product! We added top soil to make things even and planted some grass seed.
We will eventually get some new solar lights to put along the sides. The new steps look nice next to our newly redone flower bed. There were some scraggly looking roses there before and we took them out last month and planted some mini blueberry bushes and some irises. It looks so much nicer.
Here you can see the side walk way area. This used to have bricks laid out there, but it was starting to heave, even after I relaid them a couple years ago. We reused the trapezoidal stone block that was there previously and plan to get some stepping stones to place there rather than making a full walkway. I’m thinking something along these lines. They are made from recycled rubber. I like reusing and recycling!
Here is a picture of the fence area where the stones used to sit. I cleaned it up and extended the brick lined flower bed that we put in after the new neighbor replaced the fence last year. I planted some wild flower seeds and some cosmos seeds that I got free in the mail from somewhere. You can see my container garden with my potatoes, carrots and spinach. The wooden post that has the bamboo wind chime hanging from it was once part of the overhang that extends all the way back to the garage. We only use it for storing our garbage can, some firewood that’s drying and as the uprights for the “fence” that I put across the driveway to contain Bug and the dogs to the yard.
In addition to finishing the walk way and creating the new garden and planting seeds, we replaced our outside water spigot. Shortly after moving in we replaced the old existing water spigot with a frost free one. Last year it started spurting water out of the top whenever it was turned on. It wasn’t bad, but this year it started getting really bad. It made a huge mess when you needed to water anything and I dreaded using it. Of course, it wasn’t an easy fix. There was a lot of grumbling at it and some quick fixes, but in the end we have a spigot that works and it no longer wastes water!
You may be wondering what Bug was doing the whole time we were working. He was either inside playing or in the yard playing while the stones were moved and he did help a little when we were putting down the dirt and grass seed. For some of the spigot work he was running around shoot the dog with a water gun. Don’t worry, Max isn’t mad that he’s getting all wet…
In fact, he LOVES getting sprayed and shot with water!
He even waits patiently while Bug pumps the water gun back up.
We didn’t let Bug help or be around much for the moving of the stones. Since we didn’t have much in the way of equipment that could easily lift and move three several hundred pound stones, we improvised and didn’t want him getting hurt accidentally. For the first 2 stones we employed the Egyptian pyramid building method of putting the stone on a sheet of ply wood and using rollers to move it down the driveway. It actually worked pretty well, considering. For the 3rd stone, we borrowed our neighbor’s father’s dolly which was much easier. lol It’s actually great that we have neighbors who will let us borrow things. For this job alone we borrowed a sledge hammer, a pry bar and the dolly…all of which we returned, promptly. Good neighbors always return things quickly! lol
Overall, I’m very happy with how things came out. I only hope that our grass starts growing soon. It’s done nothing but rain and rain and rain (severe thunderstorms nightly) and it’s starting to wash away some of my dirt…I shored it up with some bricks today. Hopefully it will help keep the dirt in place.
