Jason and Amanda Joy Wells were thirty-something newlyweds who, two weeks after tying the knot in spring 2009, moved into their first home, a beautifully preserved 1949 one owner home filled with charming character (and lots of potential)...not to mention the giant workshop and all the fruiting trees and bushes in the back yard. This site is meant to document the evolution of this house into their home as well as all of the events, occasions and happenings in and around it.


Thursday, March 18, 2010

Hardscaping

(this is NOT our garden...yet)
Jason and I have been itching to do some hardscaping but after researching the cost of stone we thought we'd have to put it on the back burner until we had a grand to spend...until I saw the picture above. It looks like chunks of concrete shaped rocks. We thought we'd give a try at making a faux rock path - that winds through our kitchen garden - to the compost bin (see drawing in previous post).

We bought $10 worth of Quikcrete (240 lbs), sand and some little rocks. We thought about building some wood forms until we found a couple of 4x6 ft shallow boxes that would make a good container. After covering the boxes with plastic garbage bags, we mixed up the concrete with a bit of ocher pigment and poured the slabs about 3 inches thick.


We let the slabs dry for two hours and added some rough texture with a stick.



Then we mellowed it out with some crumpled plastic...a grocery bag works great. NOTE: wash your hands immediately after working with this stuff or, better yet, wear gloves.



We threw in a few rocks for added texture. They will be pulled out later to leave divets.




After letting it set up for 24 hours...



...we set the form up on its side and let the slab fall out to break it up into peices then laid it out to cure for three days.



We'll be laying the pathway over the weekend...I'll share the results!

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