Repairing Our Front Walk

by Mary Ann Romans | More from this Blogger

19 Aug 2008 02:04 PM

Sometimes a simple home improvement project that should have taken a day or perhaps even a weekend stretches out to last more than a week or two. Have you been following the adventures we have been having trying to get a simple front walk put in? If you missed out of what we have been up to, you can catch up here:

Hail in August and Our New Walk

Putting in a New Front Walk

Defining Our New Front Walk

When I last left off, we had just returned from getting some river rock to define the edges of the walk. We found quite a mess at home, because of the freak hail storm that arrived in our neighborhood while we were out.

The next Monday, while my husband was at work, the kids and I did what we could to salvage the work and continue on with the project. I was so proud of the kids, because they really helped out, doing practically everything along side of me.

We first carefully raked out all of the debris that littered the mulched path. Then we opened the bags of river rock and edged it out. My oldest son started a single file line, and the rest of us added to the line to make it more robust. Even my youngest child, two-years-old, hauled out some river rock to the site with his toy wheel barrow. The sun was hot that day, and they set up a little mining camp underneath some beach umbrellas to work. The rocks were coated with rock dust, which made the job quite messy, to the kids delight and my chagrin.

In the process of laying out the stone, I had to rake back the mulch and try to redefine the line for the walk. I finished that while the youngest two were down for their nap. After the rock was all in place, my next step was to add new additional mulch to bring the walk back up to level and raise it a bit from the lawn to help with future drainage. During that time, we were visited by a chipmunk and a large toad.

Check back again, when I update everyone on our progress!

Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog,, creating a home in the Home Blog and caring for little ones in the Baby Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.

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Learn more about Mary Ann Romans

Mary Ann Romans is a freelance writer, wife and mother of three children. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, the kids and a 16-pound cat.

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