While we really love to tackle big projects around our home, these days it's the cheap projects that top our list. We have a small area on the side of the house, leading to our basement/laundry room that turns in to a mud-pit during the winter. We've been meaning to do something before the wet weather arrives this year and when we happened upon some free concrete "screen blocks" via Craigslist, we knew we had found our next project...
After digging out and leveling the dirt path a bit, we laid the concrete blocks down with about a tiny space in between each piece.
Next, we took the dirt we had dug out (step one) and threw it back on top of the blocks and swept it in to the holes and crevices. We did this until the blocks felt snug and appeared to be set in the ground.
We decided to splurge a bit and took ourselves to the nursery where we stocked up on a few drought resistant lavander plants and a flat of trailing rosemary. We covered the empty areas with a layer of mulch (from our wood chipping project) for planting later.
For a total cost of around $40 and one Saturday's time, we're quite pleased with our new pathway...
Related Posts:
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
sweet! looks good and you wont slide and the mud when the rain comes. good show old chap.
view thedirtyshow's profile
great job! keep an eye on that rosemary, it is a great ground cover because it grows quickly, but it can become very invasive!
view hanako66's profile
those blocks are beautiful! lucky find!
view rstrtz's profile
Inspiring. More posts like this please.
view deepa's profile
I'm with deepa! More posts like this!
view RedEngine88's profile
Love the post, gotta ask where is something edible invasive?
Just take rosemary skewers to every potluck! Mmmmm rosemary, i have no garden space so i have to steal sprigs while out walking the dog....
view DahliaCactus's profile
Like that a lot! I have an area out back that needs a cure like this -- fabulous idea!
view madampince's profile
Nice job... but in order to prevent the ground from sifting and weeds from messing up your walkway in the future you should have tamped down the soil with a tamping tool, put down a layer of sand and leveled it. Repeat with a layer of gravel also tampering. Then put down the blocks and instead of dumping the soil back over the blocks, you'd use super sand or another hardening sand to preserve the blocks and keep them in place, which is especially important since you mentioned the ground turns to mud in winter. I'd hate for the ground to turn to mud on you and the blocks sinking or popping up. Maybe none of these things will happen. I hope not because it looks great.
view H.B.'s profile