Front Sidewalk

When we bought this house six years ago, we were aware that the front sidewalk was "heaved" by the roots of the large maple trees in the front yard. We focused on other repairs and changes first, however, (like a new roof and a gas stove!) but now that we've taken the house off the market, we've decided it's time to do one more thing to make it our own.

One of the huge challenges with a disrupted sidewalk is the shock you get when the snowshovel hits the ridge of concrete. It was time, as you can see in the three "before" photos below:

Like all good home improvement projects, this one suffers from the "mushroom factor." You know how that goes - you start out changing a burned out light bulb, and end up rewiring an entire room. We'd gotten three estimates from Pirc Landscaping - minimal, moderate, and ideal. We started out with the minimal, upgraded our thinking to the moderate (mid project, no less) and are ending up with the ideal, because of the issues uncovered with the grade of the dirt around the house.

Here are some during photos:

I'll be excited to share the afters, if for no other reason than the "scree" is now tamped down in the new pathway, but the dogs are tracking it in through the entire house. Two vacuumings and one washing per day are not enough to clear it out. It's now 9:00 am here, and I can hear the equipment running out front at this very moment. I'm thinking we'll see some pavers before the end of the day!