Walkway (Continued)

By late July, the paver contractor set landscaping fabric so that weeds don't grow between the bushes. The fabric is the black material you see around the bushes. The fabric lays flat and is tucked underneath the border blocks. The border blocks and some scattered stones hold the fabric in place. The fabric allows rain to pass through, but blocks the light to prevent weeds.

On the day of this photo, I was laying additional fabric in the planting bed, and painting window trim!

Above you can see implements for leveling the ground (shovel, rake, hoe). An upside down trash barrel serves as a table for paint bucket.

To Be Continued later in this post.

Fireplace

While searching online for bathroom shelving, I discovered that you can buy modern mantel pieces or floating shelves. It was what the living room needed.

I ordered to be delivered, a Bjorn Woodworks Saga mantel. It's a floating shelf sort of like the one below. Bjorn makes woodworks in a rustic Nordic style.

The original mantel was in good shape, but the style was not doing great keeping up with the times.

First step was to pull out the old mantel. Luckily there were no surprises underneath! Below, you can see the outline where the mantel was. I saved the old mantel.

The plan changed, to also remove the white fireplace border, to refurbish it. Below, all that's left is fireplace brick and wall board.

The plan changed again, once I googled fireplace ideas. I learned that chalk paint can be used on old brick and stone work. Below, I gave the bricks a chalk paint treatment. You take chalk paint, mix in Plaster of Paris for texture. Since I didn't have any plaster, I instead used powdered lime from the garden shed.

Below, you can see the refurbished white border. I removed the mouldings for a more modern touch. In the picture below, you can see how many tools are used.

Correction: that straight-edge stick is actually the bracket that the new mantel will hang on.

* The bracket gets screwed into the wall studs for maximum support.

Below is the new mantel shelf

Intermission

The Central New York Regional Market, Syracuse NY

It is a bustling place every Saturday!

Just about everything imaginable is grown locally. Not the tropical fruit of course.

Completion of the walkway

Below is the tag on a Moonglow Juniper, planted to the left of the new front stairs. Since I'm not putting up a railing, bushes will will look nicer against the stairs.

Saturday 8/14/21

Below, you can see the landscape fabric in the planting bed. Some rocks are weighing it down. To the right up against the house, you see bare ground. There is one more row of fabric to go in that area.

The final step was to spread mulch in the planting bed. Mulch was $36 per load and I got two loads. One load fills about half the pickup truck. At the nursery they use a Bobcat with a scoop, one scoop per load. One load is 3/4 cubic yards.

There are no photos of getting or spreading the mulch, due to a rush before the dinner guests arrived. A photo of the pot rack is provided instead, as it is holding out very well.

Mulch in place!

Morning Light

Epilog

Two or three large round boulders would look great among those bushes. It could cost around $2000 to have them delivered, so the boulders will have to wait.

June 7, 2021

Backlit greenery provides enchantment

Preparation

Paving stones are precision work, and it is being done by a local contractor that does landscaping and paving stones.

June 8 - Digging a trench to install the walkway. The yard needs to be dug down several inches. This depth provides space to install both the paver blocks and the gravel underneath, so that the final walkway is level with the surrounding yard.

They dug deeper at the front door, to put in the new front stairs. For support, the stair foundation goes deeper into the ground than the walkway.

June 8 - The tripod on the left holds a survey leveller. It electronically tells when the bottom of the trench is at the proper depth. A pole, called a rod, is held up, which results in an electronic signal being given when the pole is standing on ground that is dug to the proper depth.

June 9 - The stairs are built by setting 80-lb blocks around the edges, then filling the center with gravel. They call the gravel "process" which is short for processed gravel, that has a range of grain sizes allowing it to be tightly compacted.

Spreading the "process" stone

The paving blocks come stacked on pallets. They are by Nicolock, a company that makes paver blocks.

The fork lift is used to lift the pallets from the contractor's trailer, and lift other miscellaneous things to do the job!

June 12 - During this time, I'm also replacing an upstairs door. New door is laying on the sawhorses. The old door is leaning against the truck.

The door slab has to be trimmed to the right size, then holes cut for the hinges and knobs.

The space for the hinges is a recess known as a mortise. I bought a router, which is the circular thing in upper right. The old door is on top. The new door is beneath. The router produces a recessed cut which allows me to set the hinges at the exact same height as the old ones, so the new door will fit exactly on the hold hinges in the door frame.

Here are special drill tools to cut the knob and latch spaces.

June 13 - The late afternoon light was particularly enchanting.

Sunlight through seed pods at far end of the yard, along the rock wall

Fifty shades of green

Blueberries

Wildflower garden. The seed sprouts have not yet blossomed. Blossoms that you see are are plants that I bought already potted. And there is much weeding to be done.

Machimoodus

June 15 - Machimoodus State Park, less than 5 minutes drive from the house. The Vista loop is a mile or two.

Overlooking Salmon Cove. This is just before the Salmon River joins the Connecticut River.

View looking down on the walkway stones. Stones are being cut to join the walkway to the stairs.

June 16 -Patio Dining

The gaps between the paver blocks are filled with "sweeper sand" which is like a fine beach sand. The sand is vibrated into the gaps using the vibratory compactor.

June 16 - Mike spreading sweeper sand using the compactor.

The contractor brought most of the stones. But his suppliers had no curbing available to line the planting bed, where you see bushes between the house and walkway.

So I found the blocks below at Home Depot. The contractor will install these surrounding the planting bed. I bought 32 of them to cover 40 feet, the length needed along the planting bed border.