My Texas Round House: Landscaping

When the house was originally built it came with a 3' wide sidewalk on the left and right side of the house. Years later when central air conditioning was installed the outside condenser unit was placed against the house on the sidewalk essentially permanently blocking the pathway. When I had the new Carrier Heat Pump/AC system installed, it was logically placed in the same place only this time the condenser unit was half again as large completely filling the sidewalk space to the edge.

Pavers in a crisscross patterns

Years ago someone installed rectangular paver blocks along side the sidewalk where the condenser unit sat providing some semblance of a walk way but it required you step down off the original sidewalk to go around the condenser or to cross over to the old shed that is no longer there. Over time the soil eroded from rain run off causing them to sink even lower. Last year I put 3/4 of the blocks to an alternate but temporary use on the other side of the house. This year, the alternate use was concluded leaving me with a surplus of blocks laying about. I decided to put them to good use.

New sidewalk
As part of the overall landscape vision I have, part of the plan is to run a 3-4' wide swath of St. Augustine sod around the entire perimeter of the house and let it expand naturally on it's own. That said, I might go for the instant gratification and expand it even further out but to start 3-4' is enough. However, before picking up another pallet of sod I felt the need to improve on the existing patchwork of blocks still in the ground and the abundance of existing paver blocks was just the ticket!

Saturday, June 2
On Saturday, I started by bringing in the excess dirt that came with and out of the old culvert pipes that had been dug up out front. I had just cleaned the pipes out leaving me with a pretty decent pile of dirt. I relocated about 7 wheelbarrows of dirt to form the foundation for the new sidewalk. After distributing it I laid out nearly all of the paver blocks following the existing curve of the sidewalk.

Sorry for the shadows!

I packed the soil down as best I could but in the end I was not satisfied that the pavers were even or that they would drain water away from the existing sidewalk. I had a bit of a challenge as half the pavers were 2" thick, while the other half were only 1.5" thick which meant the subsoil had to be two different heights. It was time to come up with a better method.

I set about creating a template out of a 2x10" board cut in such a manner to insure the pave surface would be even all the way across the new sidewalk's width while imperceptibly sloping away from the house. It worked pretty well so I started at one end removing the pavers one section at a time and more evenly tamping down the subsoil. I had to quit early because of dinner and theater plans.

Sunday, June 3
Starting at 7:00am (I'm sure the neighbors loved me), I set about pulling up pavers, pounding my template from one section to the next. I finally got to the other end about three hours later. With all of the pavers in place I drew a diagonal line across each end in preparation for each to be cut evenly.

Once the ends were cut smooth, the next step was to fill the gaps between the stones with some type of stabilizing material. My material of choice was a half bag of Portland cement left over from the shower pan install. It was just a matter of spreading it out and sweeping well into the cracks and then watering it in.