Author: David Matson

Well, I’ve complete two of the three walkways entrances: the first being the entry at the steps of the front-porch – since it’s the one everyone will see when entering or exiting the house.  You can see the finished product to the left, all properly padded with sand and tamped into place.  No mortar used here, just dry sand.  

The top-most portion is incomplete as it heads out to the Sidewalk. It flows to the left of the picture heading out to the Driveway.  I’ll install some edging when I’m done in order to hold the stones in place and keep the grass from creeping in between the stones.  On that topic, Jana and I have a plan to follow up after the project is completed and excavate out a little of the sand in order to insert some topsoil, so that we can plant some thyme or mint between the stones.  However, I suspect some settling will occur between now and then, so think that the level of the sand to go down naturally.

The second was the entry from the Sidewalk, owing to the fact that I wanted to make sure the “curb appeal” aspect had a higher priority than the driveway entry.  I also gave the sidewalk entry the single biggest flagstone, as you can see in the picture to the right.  I think it works well to “anchor” the entryway.

The third walkway entrance (coming from the driveway) will be started tomorrow after work, – if the weather permits.

I’d say that I’m roughly about two–sevenths the way through the final portion of the project.  This is the part where I have to fine-tune the fitting of neighboring stones.  It is certainly taking a lot longer to do than I had originally thought, especially with all the interruptions in the schedule.  At my current rate, I’m averaging about six to ten stones per day on daily (after-work) basis.  Weekends allow much more time, but then I also spend a great deal of time with Ryan when he’s here, so that can be a bit of a limitation.

Unfortunately, we won’t have Ryan next weekend, so the silver lining is that I should be able to put a good 2 solid days in that weekend.   Sigh…

Today I began laying out the Sonoran Gold flagstone, just so I could see all the pieces.  I laid them out along the actual walkway to be covered, so that they could be spread-out in some semblance of order.

As I mentioned in the previous post, it’s kind of like making sure you have all of the jigsaw pieces out on the table before you bother trying to piece the puzzle together.  Same concept.  I got most of the stones out, but I have about another 10 or so stones left in the palette. 

This walkway starts at the steps (shown above), and splits off in two directions: one straight show to the front (as seen below) Sidewalk.  The second takes a 90 degree turn to the left towards the driveway (as seen to the right). 

There are nine or so Medium/Large stones (which you can see leaning against the dirt mound in the bottom picture), and one Large stone.   I’m going to try placing the single large stone at the entrance to the walkway leading-in from the Sidewalk; that should work to anchor the main entry.

Then there is the side entry from the driveway.  I’ll place a few of the Medium stone on that side of the walkway entry in order to anchor it as well.

Then I’m going to place six of the Medium-Large stones at the base of the stairs, and that too should do a good job of anchoring the walkway to the stairs.  

Next up, I’ll start to fine-tune the fittings between each of the stones.  This will likely be the hard part.  

I may have to go back and redo the layout of the sod I placed a couple of years ago in order to make things fit properly…