Finishing Our Concrete Walkway

In an earlier post, I blogged about our installation of a concrete walkway, using a really neat Quikrete form. I absolutely loved using the form– it was easy, neat, and fast. And the stones look great! I installed about 5 feet of the walkway last year, to see how they would weather our frigid winter. They did very well. The stones moved some, but it wasn’t bad at all. So we decided to finish the walkway on this side of the arbor, and seal the gaps with a sand/mortar mix to keep out weeds. Success!

Here’s a quick shot of the walkway after we laid down the concrete last week. You can read about how we did it, here.

It’s very nice. However, I wanted to give the walkway a little more horizontal support, something to hold the mortar in and keep the walkway in place. Since we have a lot of stones around the property, we decided to use these, giving the walkway a more casual, “cottage” feel to it. Eventually the English ivy, vinca major, and other perennials will overshadow the stones somewhat, kind of like this:

So here are the girls laying the stones. They were quite tired at the end of the day!

Next thing to do was put the mortar/sand mix down. We got Quikrete Sand Mix because it is stickier then the mortar, and I think it does better in wetter conditions than plain mortar mix (doesn’t crumble as easily). One of the girls poured bowlfuls of sand mix between the cracks, and my other girl and I swept the mix between the cracks more.

After the sand mix was sufficiently in place, I took the garden hose and misted the mix until it was thoroughly saturated. The sand mix stayed in place just as I’d hoped (didn’t bleed out from the cracks).

It looks SO GOOD!

Like high quality acne treatments, this mortar will keep the weeds from erupting between the cracks, whereas before we were constantly picking weeds from the cracks. And the ivy will grow over the stones a little, but won’t be able to take root into the walkway. I may add more sand mix to the areas around the stones, for added stability, but for now it is just fine.

I’d estimate and say that our walkway is about 20 feet. It took us 9 bags of regular concrete mix with two bags of regular mortar mix added to it, and then one bag of sand mix to fill in the gaps. And of course, the labor costs were free.