A Sealed Sidewalk

 My husband decided to seal the front sidewalk after a couple of small flagstone pieces chipped away over the winter.  He replaced them and then used Thompsons water seal on the entire sidewalk.

 This meant taping it off afterwards to keep any delivery people from Fed-EX or UPS from walking on it.

 The pups stayed off also.  

Have I told you what great dogs we have?

Well..... we do!

 It took a couple of dry days without any rain for it to dry, and now we are once again using the sidewalk.

 In fact, it's raining today.... a COLD rain

that will turn into an even colder night.

 It is after all still March, and there are years when we get snowstorms at this time...

but this year it's been an early and warm spring, and the flowering trees are all going about their springtime business and blooming up a storm.

 Even though it's raining, I headed outside today and snapped some photos of the blooms on the Bradford Pear trees in the front yard..

 A year ago we had a very cold winter for an extended period of time, and our Bradford Pear trees didn't bloom at all, so we are enjoying the vision of white outside our front door...

I'll share those photos with you very soon.

 Hope you are having a wonderful week-end, despite the rainy weather.

Take care and I'll be back again quicker than the wiggle of a bunny's nose.

XOX

Thoughts About Rocks

 My readers may or may not remember that a year ago we had our flagstone sidewalk re-done.  It had seen it's better days, had become a tripping hazard, and well, to be honest.... it looked REALLY bad.

Now, my husband had tried to fix it himself, and as handy a guy as my man is, a stone layer he is not.

 Unless of course it only requires stacking concret stone/pavers such as these, and then he's my dream layer. He can do this work in a heartbeat and do it well.

 

 When having any stonework done I recommend getting two or three quotes, since we found them to vary wildly in cost. The quotes we received varied by thousands of dollars.

Of course you want good work, so do your homework so you know there are no complaints by their previous customers.

Better safe than sorry.

AND, be sure to get someone who's work you have seen photos of, or they will provide you with addresses where they have done work so that you can do a drive by and see for yourself.

 This is one of the two rock walls our stone contractor did on our property and he is scheduled to come do another for us, as well as columns at the entrance to our driveway.

 This is a photo of the sidewalk when it was being done.  As you can see, it's not just a matter of laying stone on the ground.

It is dug out and a fine grain of rock laid down, then the flagstone is put in piece by piece as the stone layer using a chisel/hammer to break some pieces into the shape needed to fill in the smaller spaces.

It's artwork!

 Once the flagstone is all laid into place and leveled properly, an epoxy type substance is used to fill in between the stones to make it all one complete surface.  

The previous owners had used sand only, and let moss grow between the flagstones and WHAT A MESS!  I don't recommend that method.  The weeds that came up between the flagstones were unmanageable and required constant hands and knees weeding.  What a nightmare.  I finally gave up trying and we made the decision to have it all re-done correctly.

 Here is an estimator/calculator  by zipcode to give you a ball park figure of what it might cost to have flagstone work done on your property.

It's a nice addition to the area around your home.

Happy Father's Day To All The Good Fathers Of This World.

XOX