Hangs Head in Shame...

This post embarrasses me even before I write it.. I'm so ashamed... I should have my house taken away from me.. bad bad renovator...

Remember this post? It's from Memorial Day. We went to Lowe's and bought bricks for our back sidewalk because they were on sale. Also because I was sick of walking in wet grass every time it rained. I don't like wet shoes.

Remember this post? Also from Memorial Day weekend? I dug up the asphalt in our backyard in preparation for the new sidewalk.

Well.. here we are. Labor Day weekend. An entire season (and 3 months) have gone by with not one bit of work happening. So so incredibly pathetic! I complain and complain about the bad asphalt sidewalk, then dig it up and would apparently rather walk through mud and grass for three months. So ashamed...

Wanna see what 3 months do to a dug up sidewalk?

I think my blogging rights should  be revoked... You can't even tell where I labored in the heat for 2 full days! It was all a waste! The bricks that I laid on top of the grass (only a month ago) to test out that pattern (I had two other patterns there that also each lasted a month) are covered in grass.

There's a third rock step under there that we had honestly forgotten we even had. That's how long it has been unseen! Here's my excuse (there's always an excuse in situations like this, right??). It was too hot (in the summer. Whaaaat?!? That's craziness!) The area where the sidewalk is in direct sun all day until about 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon. On super hot, humid days, that's when we're close to calling it quits. I'm not going to start a new project then when I've spent all day doing something else! Ok, and there were a bunch of weekend vacations/trips in there too.

One of the other brick pattern options..

A couple weeks ago I made my dad promise me that on Labor Day he was all mine. We were tackling that sidewalk... rain or shine... humidity or nice day. Sunday night we're watching the news and they're forecasting rain all day on Labor Day. No. It's not going to stop me! I told my dad we were still going to do something! I didn't care what, or how much, just as long as we made some sort of progress!

My dad came over early in the morning and we immediately got to work! I cleaned up weeds around the rocks while he dug and pulled all of the grass out of the dirt ditch I had made back in May (which, by the way, turned into a nice muddy river during rain storms..). Then I started leveling the dirt as best I could. My non-existent ADD came to visit for awhile while I was digging. I found a bunch of broken china, some really old nails and a toy monkey (or Baloo from Jungle Book... we can't decide what it is). Plus some garbage. And a million rocks.

While I was waiting for my dad to finish so we could start putting down sand, I stared at the bottom rock step that I had just rediscovered. To the right of the second step was a smaller stone. It's off in the grass and kind of pointless. I realized that if we moved it and put it to the right of the bottom step it would almost even out the steps (the third step is almost half the width of the other two). Turns out it fit perfectly. So perfectly in fact that I'm convinced that it once belonged there. We filled around it with some of the extra red rock from between the other two steps, but we need to buy some more to complete it.

We first put down about a half inch of sand. On top of that went some organic weed paper. Then about another inch or so of sand, to make it level. I decided that I wanted the bricks to be level with the bottom rock step. This means we'll have to raise the grass on the other side of the sidewalk about an inch once we're done.

I didn't get to finish, but I got about 25% of the sidewalk done. Unfortunately, it's going to rain all week so I won't be able to get any work done, but now that it's started, it'll be easy to do a couple rows of brick on a weeknight for an hour or two.