Our Old House: Too Much Time Gone By…

Hello blog watchers,

Entirely too much time has gone by since we last posted something here– a couple of years in fact. Alas, ChrisAnn has picked photos and asked me to fill in the story so we’ll see how her prompting my forgettery works out.

Ahh, the front walk. When Ed and his crew reworked the driveway and installed the parking pad they excavated and stoned the area where we planned the new front walk. We had made another friend, Randy, during a project at Crestview in which he helped design and pour a beautiful set of steps. He’s been doing concrete work for longer than I’ve been pastoring and loves a good challenge. So when I asked if he’d like to help us do a stamped front walk he was eager to jump on board, with pay of course.

We selected a die color and rented a set of stamps to emulate a cobblestone walkway. The powdered die went into the premix truck and got a good stir before we filled the form, floated and troweled the mud and then hopped to with the stamp set. This process began with a thorough dusting of parting compound and then pounding the flexible stamps into the wet concrete at just the right time. Once we got into the rhythm of things it went pretty easily.

The next day we power washed it off and then finished up with a coat of sealer that really made the subtle colors and the pattern pop. I’ve done my share of concrete work, but was very happy to be the flunky on this whole project.

Randy trowels the concrete, bringing the cream to the top.

(Click on photos to enlarge for better viewing.)

After laying the stamps on the wet mud,

we pounded them down with a tamping tool (not shown).

We rotated the six stamps as we went to vary the pattern repeat.

A cobblestone front walk!

We’ve toted home tons of Pennsylvania sandstone over the years. Then the fun begins, laying the rocks out, studying their shapes, setting aside the ones that will be capstones, picking the biggest ones for the base and slowly putting it all together. Which ones have the prized edges and which ones are just plain rubble, best used for backfill? Yes, it’s a big puzzle, a bit of a headache and sometimes a real pain in the back. However, over the years I’ve learned a few tricks to moving those beasties and now my favorite tools are a couple of digging bars and a heavy duty two wheel dolly we originally bought for hauling firewood. And then there’s the six inch angle grinder with a diamond tipped blade!

Like doing the edges of a puzzle first,

I start with the corners and then work across.

Chris’ kitchen garden is full of herbs, lettuce and some late beans.

Sometimes the old adage, ‘measure twice and cut once,’ really does work out in the carpenter’s favor. When it came to the front steps, Randy and I had calculated and recalculated the rise and run of the stairs several times before we settled on the final placement of the sidewalk. Having the base in the right place and the math all done made it a fairly easy project to build the front steps. We’d hung the old ones up temporarily a couple years ago when the porch was built so we’d have access, but since they had been in the center of the porch and the ground sloped away, we eventually had to start again. Here we chose a traditional porch step with the stringers notched and recessed beneath the treads.

Turn around and parking pad to the right,

with some grass killed off for a future flower bed.

With the stringers installed, riser and tread installation goes easily.

One of the reasons we did not put a railing on the front porch or back deck when we originally began restoration work was that we didn’t know what we wanted. We knew we did not want a modern deck look. We also were not drawn to turned spindles. We hoped to have a front porch that was a delight to sit on and read a book or chat with friends as well as attractive from the street view and complimentary to the folk victorian style of our home. So, ChrisAnn went to work. The real work of this project was countless hours spent in the studio. When there is a good plan, execution becomes secondary, although in this case it was not simple.

While the rock work was going on, we ordered supplies from our friends at Mars Lumber. We picked a top rail profile that they built and milled out of cypress. To that we added some special rectangular stock for the bottom rail and a big stack of 1x8’s for the flat sawn balusters. You’ll see from the pictures that the wood shop became a little factory during the Fall. Jigs made the process go pretty smoothly but it took a some more calculating to find the sweet spot in widths with a variety of distances between posts.

Rough cutting the balusters with a jig saw.

Getting them all the same went easily with a jig, a router and a tracer bit.

Softening the edge with a 45° chamfer bit.

Stacks and stacks of balusters.

Our little garage/shop got rather congested.

When there was a 4x4 inside the post, the hanging was simple.

When the center of the post was a pipe it was another story.

Not wanting to use visible hanging brackets,

I managed to pre-drill holes to catch the 3” stainless screws.

Sealing out the rain and snow.

In the end we were very pleased with the final result, even though there were days when I thought it might never end. Thanks to a few vacation days and some late warm weather we got one coat of stain on before the cold really set in. Now it was time to clean up the shop and put things to rest for Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2015 were just around the corner.