Strut-Worthy

Just because the summer was over, didn't mean didn't still have work to do on The List.

A couple of bigger items on there were putting in some new pathways. One was in front of the chicken run, with a patio area in front of the coop, and then finally finally replacing the pathway in front of the house between the driveway and the porch. Long ago I had wanted to put in a cute path and I used bricks and all this fake rock that had been on the wall behind an old wood-burning stove in the living room when we bought the house. I did the pathway absolutely 100% incorrectly. I don't think I put anything underneath it at all, and it basically just disintegrated away. It became such a challenge to walk on that it was just easier to walk around it on the grass. Not ideal.

So, I thought I would be really brave and just start digging. I started with the chicken coop. And I re-learned something that I will not be able to adequately express in this post - it is unreal how much dirt comes up when you do a little digging. The area doesn't seem that large, but the PILES and HEAPS of dirt you end up with just don't seem physically correct.

The other thing I already knew but had to experience once again is that the amount of paver base and sand and also the number of paving stones needed for projects is astronomical, and always adds up to more than you can fit in your vehicle, and also always adds up to more than the math you do says you need.

Basically I commuted to The Home Depot multiple times a day for a while. This time I was without my trusty teenage son and had to do all the lifting and lugging myself. Actually, that's not quite true. I think three times in the parking lot, I found myself getting wordlessly helped by a man who saw my middle-aged self trying to lift things into a minivan and just had to intervene. They were so nice. 

Anyway, trying to dig the right amount of dirt and buy the right amount of materials and get it to the house and get an even layer of dirt at the correct depth and getting everything level is a major, massive, horrible pain in the rear end. However, once you get to the part where you are laying the paver sand down and tapping those paving stones into place, it's all worth it. I love creating those pathways. They look so beautiful! And then, you add that polymeric sand, which, by the way, we have now dubbed "crack sand," since I can never remember the word polymeric. It fills in all those cracks, and solidifies after you sprinkle it with water and makes it all one surface. It's tremendously satisfying. 

The walkway back by the chickens is nice, but we really just wanted to add another layer of predator-prevention around the perimeter of the coop. It's the walkway in front of the house that we love the most. It feels so luxurious so have a flat and sturdy surface to walk on. Troy even declared that the only proper way to cross the walkway was to strut down it like a runway for models. I concur. Strut worthy!