For many years now, Tricia has wanted a front sidewalk. I have a good wife. Some other wives want a lot more, but mine, well, she wants a sidewalk. Over the years she's always said, "Why do people have front doors and NOT use them? We need a sidewalk leading to the front door to welcome guests." So we put on our list to put in a sidewalk. We had contractor come pour the concrete for the sidewalk and leave space to accent part of the walk with bricks. We had saved the bricks from when our house was constructed twenty years ago and used those to incorporate into the sidewalk.
We are not skilled brick masons. We've never done this before. We learned from watching a YouTube video. Let's show you what we did. First, we experimented with different designs of brick patterns. We settled on a criss-crossed pattern with two bricks in perpendicular arrangement and then three bricks parallel. Belle voted on that design as her favorite.
We measured placement of the bricks so they were even and marked where they were to line up on the concrete with a carpenter's pencil. Then we started to remove the bricks and prepare for mortaring them in.
The mortar mix was combined with sand and water and then, using a trowel, we spread the mortar on the bottom and began placing the bricks in alignment with our markings.
This was somewhat of a tedious process. I used a level to ensure that the bricks were level with the sidewalk. Sometimes I would have to pick the brick up and trowel in more mortar. Other times I would use the level to squish the brick down into the mortar to be level.
We don't have a mixer, so we made one by cutting a big tub. We mixed up several batches of mortar mix in the tub because the next job would require a lot more mortar than just lining the bottom where the bricks would sit.
In addition to the two lines of brick accents, we chose to have an arch of bricks at the start of the sidewalk to mirror the arched brick steps. This took some time to place the bricks at the correct angle. The gentleman pouring the concrete left us a wide gap to enable us to have room to set the bricks correctly. This wide gap required a lot of mortar to fill.
You can see how the sidewalk lines up with the brick stairs.
Once the bricks are set, we used a grout bag to fill all the cracks with mortar. I didn't know what a grout bag is, but it is similar to the bag you use in baking to pipe frosting on top of cupcakes or between layers of a layer cake. We loaded the grout bag with mortar mix and twisted the top closed. Then we squeezed out the mortar between the bricks. Tricia smoothed it out with her fingers.
It didn't take long to do. You can spot the mortar bag in the center of the photo below.
Once dry, I used a wire brush to get the excess mortar off of the bricks and to smooth any irregularities.
Russ and I applied some elbow grease to clean a lot of the mortar off of the bricks. We didn't want it to look too cleaned up, so we left some mortar on the bricks, giving it an aged look.
And finally, we were done. We are pleased with the way it came out.
It is not perfect. It has "character." There were a few things we could have done differently, including understanding all the directions before getting started. We didn't follow the directions after we piped in the mortar mix. We also should have cleaned the mortar prior to it completely drying.
But all in all, we are happy with it and now we have a little confidence to take on other projects. We hope that our sidewalk is a welcoming path for guests coming to our front door.
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