DIY 8

 The price was right

    By gthe time we moved into our third home, I was pretty over the do it yourself phase of life.

    Sure, I stained and varnished the interior trim before it went up, but that was the extent of  my DIY projects.

    Until the breezeway.

    I had a vision for the breezeway.  If you don't know, we built a salt box style home, pretty typical to New England.  

    The garage was about 12 feet from the side of the house and a breezeway connected the house to the garage

    My goal was to brick the breezeway and the front sidewalk, giving the house a little character and New England charm.

    But that dream became dashed when I got an estimate of around $10,000 just for the bricks!  Yikes!!

    Fortune then smiled on us.

    The city had a site where they dumped construction waste.  Recently they had replaced a brick street in town.

    I was told to help myself, because the site was about to be buried.

    Jackie and I would go to the site, sift through dirt and sand, and find bricks.   Sometimes the girls would go with, but mostly Jackie and I got dirty and sweaty.  We could put about 100 bricks in my pick up truck.  Each brick weighed about five or six pounds.  They were paving bricks, not these wimpy little ones you buy at a box store but 4 inches deep and 8 or 9 inches long.  Substantial bricks, because they had to hold up under traffic.

    We did this before the house was even built.  I stacked each load of bricks along the back of the lot, on pallets.

    We worked in the heat.  We were covered in dirt and sweat.

    That was  not a good thing because at the time Jackie was not diagnosed with MS....that came years later.  But heat is a problem for MS patients, and may have been a factor in her case.

    Anyway, we hauled about 2,400 bricks in a period of 3 or 4 weeks.  Yes, I kept track.

    The next year I put down a brick sidewalk in front and bricked the breezeway floor.  It was beautiful and the breezeway was my favorite part of the house.

    Unfortunately the sidewalk was a pain in the ass.  Grass grew between the bricks, it was hard to clear in the winter, moss filled in the cracks which gave it a neat look but also was hard to maintain due to the grass.

    I learned how to use a wet saw to cut the bricks, and never cut my fingers or toes.

    I also vowed never to do a project like that again, because that was our forever home.

    Little did I know.

Peace and Love