Beyond the Straight and Narrow

  new sidewalk in progress 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

Picasso had his blue period, Martin continues to explore his circle period. You may remember our circular windows in the bathroom from a few months ago, which was one of several pieces coming from his ongoing love of all that is round. We also refer to this phase as swiss cheese design, 'cuz why the hell not?

Anyway. The next location for circle inspiration? The front walk. Here I'm going to have to take you back a bit. Since we moved in here, we've both admired the front walk and front stairs of a neighbour up the block. Not surprisingly -- I'll assume you've picked up on the theme here -- the stairs of said neighbour are semi-circles and his walk was kinda curvy. Well a few months ago, as we were coming home from a jog (holy mother of baby jeebus I can't believe I just wrote about jogging, moving on) we started talking to said neighbour who had recently torn up his nice curvy walk and was redoing it in a fashion that seemed even curvier than before. Sweet! We were envious of his nice even swoopier entrance way and being the DIY keeners that we are were also curious about the process of forming and pouring cement. (Yes, that's right: we jog, we talk about cement, we bought a house. I am aware of the fact that we are officially sell-outs.) That night we learned two very valuable things: 1. forming and pouring cement is actually not that tricky; 2. cement is shockingly expensive. Apparently, if you need a fair whack of it, which you do for a front walk, then you're best of having it delivered by a cement truck rather than mixing and pouring your own. And, it would seem that unless you have cement folks in your family, you're paying something insane like $500 just to have the truck come visit you, let alone pay for the cost of the cement. Upon learning that, our hopes for a meandering, whimsical curvy front walk were kind of sunk. Afterall, $500 is a heck of a lot of Marmoleum!

Until.

Until I happened upon a place selling cement "stones" for cheap. Cheaper than the big box home/hardware stores. And we began to hatch a plan to use pre-formed cement blocks to make the whimsical walkway of our dreams. And here's the secret ingredient, though you've probably already guessed it: circular cement paving stones. Huzzah!

Now, I'm talking about this like I was in anyway involved, and really aside from the planning stages I was not. No. Today while I worked at the kitchen table, Martin, sledgehammer in hand, busted up the front walk and began laying our new front path. And only a few (3?) hours later he's pretty darn closed to done. We're missing some stones to fill things in just right and need to pick up a few more next week when he's out in the burbs near the discount cement tiles place. But wow. Total cost so far under $200 and it likely won't go over even with the extra tiles to be bought. (It should be noted that this figure was arrived at after sourcing out prices on these pavers. They were nearly twice as much at the big box places, so keep that in mind.) This man is a flurry of domestic activity these days.

If you want to know how this was done, and if you're a nerd like us you will, click on the link for more. Otherwise, enjoy this latest contribution to the larger body of work known as the circle period.

Banish your boring straight path, in favour of this cooler round one! What's the matter? Are you square?

Materials:

* Sledgehammer (unless you don't need to remove a walkway)
* Crowbar (also for removing old cement, so not required if you don't need to do that!)
* Shovel
* Circular Cement Stones, we used the following: twelve 20" circles, ten 16", and ten 12"
* A wheelbarrow will come in very handy but is not totally necessary
* Gloves with good grip

Instructions:

1. Whether you are starting by removing old sidewalk with a sledgehammer, shoveling out sod or by some freak of nature have an already prepared surface, a pair of work gloves with rubber grip will be your friend during this project. They'll save your nice soft hands from the evils of hard work, and will help prevent sitcom like accidents from happening when you either drop paving stones on your foot or your sledgehammer goes flying off into the front windshield of the neighbours car.

2. With your gloves on, you need to prepare your surface, to create a good base for your new paving stones. If you're removing an old sidewalk this will mean using a good sledgehammer to break up the walk. Your crowbar may also help to get some of the larger pieces up once everything is dislodged and cracked. Once broken up, you'll need to gather all that broken cement/rock and move it somewhere. If you plan to lay cement anywhere else, hang onto this  to use as a base. In the worst case scenario that you can't find another use for this you will need to dispose of it.

2b. If you don't have cement you're removing, then you'll likely need to remove sod. This is less fun than using a sledgehammer, but potentially less dangerous. Grab a good shovel, cut out squares of grass with it and start digging. Take breaks, and it would be best to do this after a dry period otherwise the soil will be quite heavy, thus requiring more back-breaking labour, which no one likes.

3. Ok, you've cleared out all your gravel or grass and you've got a nice spot to lay your tiles. At this point your surface should be nice and even and roughly the same depth as your tiles, that is, if you sit your tiles on the surface they should be flush with the adjoining surface (which I'm assuming is lawn). You may need to do a bit more digging to get there.

4. Start laying out your tiles! This is the fun part. Just lay them out in different patterns, and move them about until you are happy. Stand back and admire your arrangements from different angles.

5. Once you're happy with your configuration, you'll need to start making small adjustments to ensure that each tile is evenly settled into the ground. You don't want an uneven surface causing your mailperson to take a spill and blame it on your new creative venture do you?

6. With each tile in its final resting spot, you'll need to start filling in the bits between your tiles. Whether this is just with dirt, or little bits of sod from the larger pieces that have been removed is up to you. The easiest thing is likely to just put some of the displaced dirt back and either spread grass seed (kind of evil perhaps) or something lovely like a creeping thyme (seed will be the much cheaper option here than trying to fill this with small plants) and waiting for it to grow.

7. Voila! Be prepared to answer questions and strange looks from your Italian neighbours.