The way of the brick

/ Ramblings / By

I’ve finished the brick walkway! At least for now. I can see getting another thing of masonry sand at some point and redoing the cracks. But for now, it’s done!

Warning: Lots of pictures under the cut.

Hauling bricks in the back of my car. It took two trips.
898 bricks total, plus lots of bits and pieces.
898 bricks from another angle.
Kiera looks on
My supervisor for the job
The old rock walkway, what it used to look like. Very messy, rocks all over the place.
Again, the old rock walkway. Very messy!
I hired someone from the Millionaire Club to dig out the old rock walkway. He did a great job.
After I had the dug down dirt path, I placed weed prevention paper, then a couple of inches of sand.
I had two yards of sand delivered to the back parking lot. The guy from the millionaire club didn’t have time to shovel it onto my walkway, so I did all that work.
All the extra dirt from the walkway was spread very carefully through out the rest of my backyard. The guy I had from the Millionaire club was careful, and did a fantastic job!
The start of the me laying the bricks. It didn’t take that long to do. I was able to put down most of the bricks in a single afternoon. I took a second day to lay the remaining 40+ bricks, then spent a lot of time leveling out the rows of bricks.
I have a wet tile saw, that I fitted with a masonry blade to cut the bricks. I ended up being spattered with “brick juice.” I figured it was good for me, like a clay mask for all my skin. Right?
I was not born with the knowledge of how to cut bricks. The one on the right is one of my first attempts. What happened though, which is something that frequently happens to me with physical things, is that I stopped, went away for a few days, and when I came back, my body had figured out how to do it.
The finished walkway. After I had all the bricks in, and mostly leveled off, I swept masonry sand in between the cracks, then wet the bricks down, to get the sand to set.
See the pretty new walkway! I thought it was especially lovely when the lights came on and the bricks were still wet.
I started with 898 bricks. I finished with 166 left over. So I used 732 bricks in this project. My initial estimate was 730.