Renovate brick walkway

When we bought this house, there was a door into the kitchen, but no walkway to get to the door from the street or parking area. In fact there was no parking area! In consideration of the need for a walkway I took it upon myself to build a dry laid brick walkway. There were lots of bricks around the property from the brick chimneys that had been dismantled over the years. It made sense to recycle those bricks into the walkway we needed.  If I didn't reuse them, we would have had to dispose of them. In addition to the logical reasons to use the brick, there was an aesthetic reason to use the bricks....they look great in a garden, and on either side of this walkway is my herb garden.

When Mr built the foundation, my walkway took a beating. It was pounded by tools, the cement mixer and concrete blocks brought in for the foundation. Much of it was totally dismantled because it was in the way of some of the excavations necessary for the foundation. I was pretty upset about the damage it sustained, but there was no way to avoid it. The foundation construction continued from August through December when the hard freeze rolled in.  We did without the kitchen door for all of those months. It was a major inconvenience to have the door closed up. Groceries had to be hauled three times the distance they were carried in when the door was in working order. I couldn't reach my bird feeders. We couldn't open the door to see what the temperature and weather was outside. Losing use of that door caused major cabin fever.

running bond of the brick walkway

piles of debris from demolished pilings

note the halved brick border along the edges of the walkway

A few times over this winter we have had the blessing of a warm 50 degree day. We have used these days to get this door back on line and get the walkway back into passable order. Today was one such warm bright day, so a project was in order.  My project of the day was to repair to the damaged walkway.  The bricks had to be pulled up and relaid. There are also plenty of bricks that have to be sorted to create the rest of this walkway. The bricks that had to be sorted were debris from the demolition of the pilings under the house. Today I took on some of this work. My original walkway was a narrow pathway. It was the best I could do at the time. My original goal was to make a reasonably smooth, if narrow, walkway to transverse the area from house to car. Today's goal was to repair the damaged areas and to widen the walkway if possible. I didn't accomplish as much as I had hoped to, but the walkway is better for my efforts. Much of the walkway is now four feet wide. I also built a small an border edge along the sides of the top half of the walkway. I turned half bricks on end, dug a trench to set them in, and then used the ends to create a border along the sides of the walkway. The border is slightly higher than the paving bricks, so it provides a bit of a retaining wall for the herb plantings on the high side of the walkway. All in all its looking and working pretty great.

Mr's project of the day was to continue work on the new water system.  It is working perfectly, but there are aspects of its installation that still have to be adjusted. We are enjoying the novelty of clear clean fresh water. We both took showers like we used to take for granted in our life before living this house. Grateful we were for those rejuvenating showers!   After finishing the water system work Mr took on some work on the brick pathway himself. He took on the work of adding some length to the pathway. After shoveling and raking sand and dirt around to create a bed for setting the bricks, he dug into brick laying.  I had already spent a lot of time moving bricks to the end of the walkway, so some of that aspect of the project was done for him. After a couple of hours he was able to complete about six additional feet of length onto the walkway. It still not to the street, or even the car parking area, but it is longer than it was this morning. That is how we do things around here, incrementally. We try to accomplish a bit everyday, hoping that one day we find ourselves with a much improved and hopefully finished living quarters. Doesn't seem like that will happen anytime soon, but you have to have faith when involved in a project like this!