Sidewalk Progress

The sidewalk project is becoming the Office project of 2010. It just never seems to end!

My dad came over yesterday after work to help me dig out some more of the sidewalk. We got to the garage and the turned the corner between the lean-to and garage. That's where we literally hit a snag. A HUGE rock, which might be partly acting as a primitive footing for the lean-to, was in our way. The distance between the two buildings is only 3' so I already had to make my sidewalk narrower in this area. Now I have a huge rock sticking out about 6" into that. The lean-to is going to be our main project next summer (if it makes it through the winter!) and I was already planning on pushing it away from the garage another 2 feet or so. Plus we'll be pouring a concrete foundation, so the rocks will be gone. So I decided to just work around the large rock for now, save the bricks that will go there and install them next summer after the lean-to is re-built. I found a LOT of broken china by that rock though.. so I can't wait to see what we find next summer when we excavate for the frost walls!

After my dad left, I decided to work on the sidewalk until R came home from work. That way I'd have more time today to devote to the Kitchen. I got pretty far in that hour and a half! Between that and a couple hours this morning I made it around the corner!! I'm running really low on bricks though. I ended up making the sidewalk about 8" wider than I had originally planned, so we'll have to make another trip to Lowe's for more bricks soon. I'll get pretty close to the end though. I also put sand between the joints almost to where I ended, so we could walk on the sidewalk for most of the way to the garage (it's at a point now where it would be almost impossible to not step on it). I've gotten so many compliments on it so far!! The chimney guys... three neighbors! Everyone thinks it looks great and is shocked when they hear I did it myself!

Me and My Indecisive Brain..

Is it that I'm indecisive, or am I a perfectionist? Either way, I ripped up everything I did last Monday. The whole sidewalk.

Let's start this at the beginning. This morning I went outside to work on the sidewalk. I gathered my bricks and tools and got to work. As I was working, I realized that if I pushed the bricks up closer to each other, the joints were smaller and looked better. Long story short, when the bricks were more level, the joints were smaller. So I ran inside and got the level. Now that I was able to make them 100% level, I realized that my bricks from Labor Day were slightly off. So after doing about 4' of new brick, I went back and started working backwards, leveling the sidewalk. This actually worked out well because I had run out of weed paper and was too lazy to go to Lowe's and I didn't want to put down any more brick without weed paper underneath.

Anyways.... by the time I got back to the beginning, I was off by more than a brick height. The level bricks were about 3" higher than the original ones. I was disgusted with myself! Staring down at it, my dad and I realized what I had done. Last weekend, my main concern was keeping the first row of bricks level with the bottom stone step. From there, I was trying to keep the last row of bricks level with the grass. And the result was a sloping sidewalk. So I sat there and thought about it... A level sidewalk won. I could always build up the grass along the sidewalk and slope it down to the existing grass level. The yard slopes down in that direction anyways, so it wouldn't look weird.

This picture shows just how un-level I was!

Once I was done, I realized that it being level made it look a million times better! It looked more professional. In fact, I commented to R that it looked too nice for our house :) Especially next to the lean-to, which would probably collapse if you breathed near it. (Can you say Project: Summer 2012?)

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.

Choosing a Paver Color

The back/Kitchen door is the door we use on a daily basis. There is a path/sidewalk/a couple pieces of asphalt leading from the driveway to the big stone steps in front of the door. As ugly as it is, it wasn't exactly one of our top priorities. We're focusing on the interior problems first, and will deal with the exterior and landscaping when we're done. However... With all of the rain we've had this spring, the little path has gotten to be a huge annoyance. After only about an inch of rain, the pathway transforms into a stream. It must have been installed a long time ago, and incorrectly, because over time the asphalt has sunken in the ground. In some spots it is completely under the grass. In others it has sunken to form a "V". So if it is raining, or rained yesterday, you have to walk on the grass alongside the path. Which isn't any better than walking through the river path. The bottom 6" of my pants and shoes get soaking wet and I'm mad by the time I make it to the car.

Last week I saw a commercial for Lowe's saying they were having a Memorial Day stone sale. All stone pavers were on sale.. 20% off. While at Lowe's a couple days later (to get stuff to build the garden) I checked out the pavers. I didn't really love any of them... but if I had to choose one, I'd choose the cheapest one they had. Just plain bricks.. in red or gray. Nothing special, but I didn't like any of the expensive ones either, so why not just buy the least expensive ones? 

This Saturday we bought a sample of each color. R wanted red and I wanted gray, and arguing about it at home is usually better than doing it in the store :) The bricks sat outside for 2 days.. and of course, one of those days it rained. Before the rain, I still preferred the gray one. The top rock step is reddish in color, but the bottom one is more grayish. Both colors looked good next to the bottom step, but I thought that the gray looked better against the grass (and I hate red). But after the rain, the gray looked horrible! I can't even explain it. So red it is.. And they're only $0.38/each (though that really does add up when you realize you need 585 of them).

With the help of my dad's friend, we went and bought the bricks today. As big and heavy duty as his truck is, we still had to make two trips (luckily Lowe's is literally one mile down the road). It was horribly hot and humid today, so this is as far as we got:

They're piled up behind our garage.. hopefully we'll get a less humid weekend soon..

Me & A Pick Axe

Today I tore up the back sidewalk... With a pick axe (which is an awesome tool btw). The sidewalk was asphalt, but wasn't installed correctly, so it wasn't too hard to tear up. Most pieces came up in smaller 4"ish pieces, but toward the garage they came up in huge huge pieces (like 2'x2' or larger).

Unfortunately it was wicked hot and humid this weekend, so I'd work for like a half hour and then have to go inside and rest for awhile. It took me all day to tear up the sidewalk (all that's left is the little bit between the lean-to and garage), which is about 32 feet long (not including between the lean-to and garage).

Wildflowers

We first saw the house on May 5, 2010. It was a hot spring here in New England, so everything had already bloomed by then. It was more like summer here that day. So we really never saw the house in the spring. It was nice being surprised by all of the random flowers! We first noticed daffodils sprouting up... some behind the lean-to, some by our lilac bush, some by our mailbox... even some randomly planted in a line in the woods. Those ones are a little strange.. Then the wildflowers started coming up. The whole northern half of our backyard was covered in these pretty little purple flowers.

I loved them!! After about two weeks or so, they died out, and new flowers appeared in the southeastern part of the backyard. I believe those were violets.. white and purple ones. Our backyard was so beautiful (until R cut the grass this morning and as a result also cut down most of the flowers)!

The trees in the woods grew in (except one... which looks dead on the bottom, but now has small buds on the top.. we aren't sure what to do).. I love the privacy that the woods provide.. I love looking out the back windows.. it's calming.


The bare patch in the yard where the pool used to be even filled in a little bit. R bought a bag of grass seed and spread it around the yard in the random bare patches. However, then the rain that we were promised didn't come for about 2 weeks and in the meantime the birds had a buffet of grass seed. So, it didn't fill in completely, but it still looks better than it did last year. The pool spot is where we're planning on planting a garden anyways.


And now we have a bunch of tulips randomly planted around the yard. There are a bunch around the tree by the driveway and a lot in the space between our driveway and our next door neighbor's. I love tulips. I got some more that I plan to plant later this year.


Even the bushes in front of the house are somewhat growing in. So we've decided to wait until next year to see if we need to replace them. They don't look bad from the street because we're on a hill.. it's only when you're up close to them that they look horrible. We'll see...


We've also decided to put in a walkway in the backyard that goes from the driveway to our backdoor. There is some sort of paved trench there now that has served as a walkway, but it's horrible. And it wasn't at all helpful in the winter (R just shoveled a path next to it on top of the grass). So I think we'll get some pavers or bricks sometime soon and just put in a simple path. Anything will be better than what's there now!

Doing Some Exterior Work

This weekend Ryan's parents came down to help out. My job was to tackle the bushes that were taking over the front of the house.

What's the point of having a beautiful house with tons of windows if no one can see it and you can't see out of it?


Those bushes were not easy to cut down. They had been allowed to grow without any maintenance for so long that their trunks (is that what it's called on a bush?) were as wide as a small tree. We had to go buy a new saw! The thickest of the trunks was 4 or 5 inches wide! We even found a small maple tree growing in between the ones on the right of the house... I felt bad cutting that down, so in the spring we'll attempt to relocate it to the backyard somewhere. 

While it looks a lot better than it did, I'm not 100% pleased. We can see out our windows and the house doesn't look unloved, but the bushes were so tall, that cutting them back resulted in revealing what is basically the insides of the plant. If you look out our Living Room or Dining Room windows at them, all you see is a mess of branches. Yuck. We've gotten mixed responses on whether or not they will grow in, and cover this up, but I'm not sold. I have a feeling that come spring (which is when we'll be moving outdoors and doing some landscaping), I'll be digging these up and planting something much smaller.