New York Renovator

I’m busy trying to get all my Internet writing work done these days, and at the same time, scrambling around trying to winterize before the snow falls (which, they say, will occur Friday morning). Eeep! I’m not ready for winter. I mean, I’m READY— there’s nothing I’d like more than to cozy up in front of a toasty fire with one of those pretty Fireplace screens, cuddled up with cat and blanket. But we have a LOT of loose ends to wrap up before anything cozy goes on in this house. For one, there’s this:

Yes, that’s a hole in my basement window. The window fell out.

That’s the original 1855 basement window. The old cut nails are still in it. It had been patched at some point in the past 100 years or so, but I’m amazed it’s lasted this long. We have a few other ones that are seeing their demise, now.

Rather than figure out how on earth to replace the window (and figure out how we’d afford the custom craft), we decided to close off the window. This area of the house is extremely soggy, and water tends to pool beside it. Instead of exacerbating a water problem by keeping a hole here, closing off the window will seal out the moisture. Next year, we’ll remove all the top soil and lay a slab of concrete, to further direct water from the roof from collecting here.

I’ve got some kids who help me haul the concrete, and mix it. Yay!

I lay a thin layer of sand mix to give the cinder blocks something to grab as they sit in there. After the first row of blocks, I fill them with concrete. Then I slather another layer of sand mix, and add another row of blocks. I will eventually smooth out the entire side, to make the wall look seamless.

This is just the first row of blocks. I have since added two, and need to wedge in a narrow third before the window is entirely sealed off. Problem is, I’ve been SO swamped with work that I haven’t been able to get back out to the project.

I’d better hurry. We have a mass of water and drain pipes right in front of this hole. God forbid they should freeze.

We FINALLY got a break in the clouds and rain, enabling us to continue building our Secret Garden walkway. So far, we’ve done this in three stages. This year, we busted sod and removed a good-sized portion of the lawn, adding to this garden. And this allowed us to continue our concrete walkway. It’s looking SO beautiful! I love walking over to this area in the cool of the evening, it’s just a lovely spot. The shrubs will eventually grow up and over the arbor and the walkway, giving the entire side yard a “mysterious” and enchanting atmosphere. When this section is finally done, I think I’m going to mail out birth announcements or something, and throw a party!!!

Here are some photos.

We use the Quikrete concrete mould, and plain old Concrete mix. It works so well!

This was all last week. The concrete has now dried to nice white color, matching the rest of the walk. We will eventually build this walkway (and the garden) to fill up this entire area of the lawn, leading up to our garage area at the back of the house.

We’ve had three full days of sunshine and no rain! What a remarkable break. So i did what all the Upstaters did this week– scrambled to get my gardening work done before it rains again!

We have essentially completed the front section of my Secret Garden. We have finished the concrete walkway, and laid large stones on both sides and mortared between the walkway gaps. You can read about that here. It occurred to me that I haven’t really done a good job of helping you to envision the landscape of my property. It’s a rather large piece of land for being in the center of town– 1.25 acres. That’s larger than anyone else up or down the streets, I think. It’s a long and narrow lot, surrounded by businesses and parking lots. But the many Maple trees on my land help it from looking too industrial.

Here’s the front of the house, taken about halfway down my driveway.

A closer look. You can see the very old siding (asbestos tile, installed in the 1960s) and the older windows (from 1907).

The driveway goes all the way back to a large parking lot. This house used to be a parsonage, and the church owners before us had installed a huge tract of asphalt behind the house. Believe me when I say it gets BLAZING hot back there on sunny days.

To the side (north side) of the property is a narrow (only about 20 feet wide from house to neighboring parking lot) strip of land. I’ve been developing this area for a few years now. I call this area my Secret Garden, see here for why.

I’ll take you across the front yard over to that area. Here are my daughters helping me move stones, to complete our concrete walkway that we started.

Here’s the view from the other side of the arbor.

So eventually I want to fill in this entire section of the property with shrubs and perennials. A narrow, concrete walkway lined with stones from the property will cut through the tunnel of foliage. I can see it in my mind’s eye and it looks beautiful.

The installation of the concrete walkway went very well. We used a Quikrete form to make little footpath stones. I added sand mix to seal the gaps between the stones and it looks like a million bucks.

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.

I have a narrow plot of land on one side of the house– it’s only about 20 feet wide, and it is the only thing between the house and the parking lot next door. So I’ve been developing this area for the past few years. I call it my Secret Garden because I have planted tall flowering shrubs that will eventually grow up and over the arbor I set there, making a hallway from the front yard to the back yard; it will look like a tunnel of flowering foliage. Right now, everything is still rather low, but it’s made great progress.

Because it is a narrow area, and because the children love to run around the house and chase each other in circles, I’ve been building a concrete walkway through this little garden. Last year I blogged about how the children gave me a Quikrete concrete form and some bags of concrete for my birthday. My husband and I installed about 5′ of the walkway. The children and I finished the walkway course up to the arbor. (We intend to extend the garden, and the walkway, beyond the arbor, in the future). It was the first time that the kids got to work with concrete, and they did a terrific job! I’m also very impressed with the ease and durability of the Quikrete walkway form. Although the walkway has shifted a little from last winter’s frost heave, the walkway remains in place and is still in perfect condition. I think we will continue using the Quikrete form method elsewhere in the yard. I love it!

We bought the regular concrete mix, but I added a third of a bag of mortar mix to the concrete mix, to make the mix more sticky.

The most laborious part of the entire project is making sure your concrete is thoroughly mixed well– no dry spots. We made sure the concrete has the consistency of mud pies. When you chop the wet mix with your hoe, it should leave “hills” that do not blop from too much moisture, or look too crusty and dry.

You set the walkway form on the ground and fill it up. It is best to chop the concrete into the sides and edges of each unit, to make sure there are no gaps or air bubbles.

We smooth it out with a trowel.

And carefully lift up the form.

Here we are, making progress. we used 5 bags of 80 pound concrete mix, with one full bag of mortar mix between them. This got us about 12 feet of walkway.

The crowning moment is signing your handiwork. And we pressed a few flowers into the concrete, too.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we will lay some large field stones from the property along the pathway, to give the walkway added stability. Then I will sprinkle sand mix between the walkway cracks and wet the mix. This will fill the areas between the “stones” and stabilize them. This part of the yard will be completely done! Woooo!