Posted in Projects to Make, Newspaper, Garden Ideas |
Make Your Own Walkway
June 29th, 2006
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Anyway, back to my sidewalk. I wanted to make a small one to start, just to see how hard it was. So I made one that was nine feet long and six feet wide. I put it in leading up to a seating area in my yard, pasing though an arbor. Before I tell you HOW I did it, here’s what it looked like completed: 
And here’s what I bought to make it:
cement: $12.00
cement coloring: $6.00
cement mold $15.00 (Lowe’s)
sand: $1.00 (I buy broken bags at Lowe’s for half price)
I had the arbor up and the bench sitting there. It was all grass between the two - a place that had to be weed-whacked to maintain. I’m on an anti-weed-whacking campaign so….
I was going though the Lowe’s store flyer and saw the mold listed there - I had seen it in other magazines, but hadn’t thought about using one (or even making a walkway) until the ad jumped out at me. I went to the store and got the last one they had. I also got the cement coloring there. There were 6 colors to choose from. The one you see
is “red”.
The mold had instructions on it’s cardboard wrapper on how to use it and had a table of how much cement was needed to fill whatever size walkway one wanted to make. I took the wrapper off and laid the mold on the ground where I wanted the walkway to start - then flipped and turned it several times to cover the area I wanted cover - counting the mold sets I’d need. I needed six - which meant 6 bags of cement, which I then bought (that stuff is HEAVY!)
I weed-whacked the grass as low as I could get it in the area the walkway would be. Then I mixed up a batch of cement in an old metal tub. I made two mistakes - one, I mixed up PINTS with QUARTS in my mind (and then in the tub), so I added too much water at first, and had to keep adding cement to the tub. And two, I didn’t stir the color in the water enough before adding it to the cement. You do have to add the color to the water and then the water to the cement. And you have to stir the color in the water really well.
So my first “mix” of cement was a LOT…2.5 bags worth. I mixed it to a stiff enough consistency that it held it’s shape when I mounded it in the tub with the shovel I was mixing with (I used a long handled ditch-digging shovel to mix with). It was still pretty wet, but as long as it didn’t run, I was ok with it.
I used the shovel to scoop the cement mix into the mold center, heaping it up. Then I used a plastic wallpaper smoother to move the cement aound to fill the holes of the mold up. I wore plastic gloves so I used my hands to fill in the mold as well. Once I was sure the mold holes were all filled, I lifted the mold off and laid it down where the next set of stones needed to go. The actual filling of the mold, smoothing and lifting took like 15 minutes per mold set. After I moved the mold, I used my hands to push any small cement pebbles flat that were sticking up. The mold itself is designed to leave the cracks bewteen the stones.
I repeated for the other five mold sets I needed - the mold itself interlocks every way you could want it to interlock (except if making a curve, but they gave you instructions on how to do even THAT!). Once my six were done, I had some colored cement left over so I used the top row of stones in the mold to make up stones with the cement to use it up. I needed to freehand a bit but even THAT was easy. Here are a side view and a long view of the walkway:
That was it to laying the walkway. Cleanup was easy - just water from the garden hose. The mold can be used and reused and reused. It’s made from a hard plastic.
I waited two days to plant the plants. The stones lightened up in color A LOT in those two days. But they were “formed” and set within hours of me making them. After the two days, I lifted a few of the stones just to see what they looked
like, and then realized that I could MOVE this walkway if I wanted to. How cool is THAT!
Anyhoo, I used a post hole digger to dig holes for the hibiscus on the edges, planted the plants, covered the roots with compost and then edged the two rows of flowers with large rocks. I planted the thyme in the cracks, and then used a
whisk broom and dustpan to put the sand in the cracks. I brushed the sand off the stones, and then used my garden hose to sprinkle water on the sand and pack it down. It rained later that day to help with that.
When I do this again, I’d put several layers of newspaper under the cement on top of the weed-whacked grass. It will slow down the growth of stuff coming up through the cracks that I didn’t want. Otherwise, I just LOVE this!
Get yourself a cement mold, and see what you can create. And tell me about it!
Your Frugal Decorating Diva,
Nancy
Daniel on 24 Sep 2007 at 4:13 am: 1
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article By Design : Make Your Own Walkway, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
Janelle on 1 Sep 2008 at 7:01 pm: 2
I was really REEEEALLY skeptical at first. but I bought the supplies and did it. It turned out GREAT! The hardest part was clearing out the grass,digging the soil and making the ground somewhat level(I eyeball-ed it). The only difference we did different was instead of only using sand to fill in the cracks, we mixed Portland Cement (the fine cement with no gravel) with the sand. We then brushed it into the cracks and watered it down with the hose. The next day it was hard enough to walk on and it was and will continue to be weed-free!
It looks like a professional did it-and it only cost around $100.00 to do an 4ftx12ft walkway.
I would encourage everyone to try it–you’ll really like it!
We also went with the color “terra-cotta”. The back of the bottle says to use 1/2 a bottle per bag of concrete–we streched it and got 4 bags per bottle. Just measure it out every time or your blocks will be different colors.
Good luck! email me with any questions!
*Janelle
cassidyL2002@aol.com