With Spring here now and summer quickly approaching, it may be time to look for new projects to tackle around your home. One popular project that many homeowners like to undertake is to create a brick walkway.
One thing is for sure…a new walkway, especially one that is comprised of brick paving stones, can add a nice touch of curb appeal to your home and can help to increase the overall value to your home by increasing the landscaping of your home.
The job may take some muscle and it should take up to 8-10 hours of work and careful measurements. However, your hard work will pay off in an excellent way once you have completed all of the steps correctly.
This Old House recently created a step-by-step video of how to do this work. Here is a link you can follow to watch the instructional video. VIDEO LINK
As an added helpful way to complete the project, here is a step-by-step list of instructions to follow when completing the project.
Steps:
1. Dig about 8″ of soil away (from the area you want to create the walkway) using a shovel.
2. Once you have completed digging the area for the walkway, cover it with about 3 inches of ¾-inch stone mixed and stone dust.
3. Use a rake to spread the mixture evenly in the area you are going to put the bricks in.
4. Use a gas-powered plate compactor and a hand tamper to tightly compact the stone base.
5. You will want to pay careful attention to this step. Use a laser level to establish the height of the paving stones or bricks at each end of the walkway. Subtract to find the difference between the two dimensions, then divide the remainder in half. The resulting dimension is the midpoint height of the walkway.
6. Insert a wooden stake into the middle of the walkway and use the laser level to find the midpoint height on the stake. This represents the paver height in the middle of the walkway.
7. Now that you have discovered these dimensions, cover the compacted stone base with about 4 inches of sand and use the gas-powered compactor and the hand tamper to compress the sand.
9. Stretch a mason’s line along each side of the walkway to represent finished height of pavers.
10. Measure down from each line a distance equal to the thickness of the pavers. Press a metal pipe into the sand to represent the bottom of pavers.
11. Pull a 2×4 screed across the metal pipes to remove the excess sand and establish the finished height of the sand bed. Remove the pipes and fill in the resulting grooves with sand.
12. Starting along one edge of the walkway, set the pavers down onto the sand bed. Be sure to stagger the joints to form a running-bond pattern.
13. When necessary, cut the pavers to size with circular saw fitted with a diamond-impregnated blade.
14. Install plastic edging around perimeter of walkway to hold the pavers in place. Secure the edging with 12-inch-long spikes.
15. Cover the pavers with ½ inch of sand, and then run the plate compactor over the walkway to drive the sand down into the joints between the pavers.
16. Use a push broom to sweep the excess sand from the walkway.
17. Wait one to two weeks, then sweep more sand across the walkway to fill any voids between the pavers.
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