Hardscraping

So, I finally decided to do something about the skimpy front walk that leads from my driveway to the front door. I've spent much of the last two weekends -- plus after work Monday and Tuesday this week -- expanding it with concrete pavers. That's meant two trips to Home Depot (the second one due to a considerable underestimate of the quantity of paver base I would need); digging out the areas adjacent to the walk...

... spreading and compacting paver base...

... followed by a layer of weed barrier cloth, then spreading and screeding sand (forgot to get those pictures)...

... and finally laying the pavers. You can see how much width I've added -- about 16 inches to a 36-inch wide walk.

Actually, that rundown is something of a simplification. In reality, I did the whole sequence on the lower end (at the right of the photo above) the first weekend, then did the side piece (at the top of the photo) the second weekend.

This turned out to be something of a mistake, as the measurements didn't quite match at the corner (below left). Which is why I just spent an hour and a half after work today scraping off my thumbprints, pulling up and resetting everything with slightly larger gaps to take up the slack (below right).


Not quite done yet; I still need to cut off the excess weed fabric, install edging, fill in the large gaps at the outside edges, and sweep sand into all the joints.

Now I know why they call it hardscaping.