Reclaim the Street

The next step in this little project of ours was to reclaim the footpath for pedestrians and get rid of that, let’s face it, rather ugly site fencing. With the door frame for the garage and the front door done we were finally able to lock up the front of the house and no longer needed the site fences to provide security.

The first task was to get the bobcat back in to dig up nearly three years’ worth of compacted road base from the foot path and cart it away. We were then able to get the truck to bring in a load of clean, yellow sand to replace the dirt we just got rid of! A bit of leveling and a few passes with the compactor and we were able to start laying the concrete tiles down. These were the same concrete tiles that we pulled up in October 2012 and have stored on site all this time with the hope of replacing them. It’s nice to see this sort of plan come to fruition.

Glad we didn’t have to dig it up by hand

Removing the roadbase from the footpath

Bobcat removing old gravel and dirt from the footpath

Glad we didn’t have to shovel it out by hand!

New sand to form a base for the footpath

Relaying the concrete tiles that we pulled up nearly three years ago

Looking good – relaying concrete tiles

Footpath all done (temporarily went across the driveway so everyone can walk without tripping)

But what’s a footpath without a street tree? We had saved and potted our old street tree as well but, unfortunately, it didn’t fair as well as the concrete pavers in the intervening years. Here’s where it is good to know your neighbours. Ours just happened to be installing a new driveway and had a lovely, mature tree right in the way. The council couldn’t put in her cross over until she had removed the tree and we needed one – a match made in heaven.

One Sunday Greg got in and dug around the roots, keeping the ball as big as possible. He then rigged up some scaffold on the back of the ute to make a small crane. A chain block on the scaffold and a strap around the tree and we were able to gently pull the tree out of the ground and swing it onto the back of the ute. It wasn’t a long trip to get it to its new home (only 20m up the street) but it sure was better than carrying it! The scaffold crane made it easy to lower the tree into a new hole. Then heads down, bums up (literally) to back fill the hole, making sure there weren’t any air pockets around the roots. Our other neighbour provided some much needed and helpful advice on pruning the tree and we are pleased to say that at the time of writing there are new buds and shoots starting to show on all of the branches.

Digging up the street tree from our neighbours to move it up the street (she had to remove it to install her own driveway)

Mini crane rigged up with scaffold on the back of the ute to transport the tree 20m up the road

Planting the tree in its new home

Looks like it’s always been there – hope it survives (#won’tknow’tillspring) (#puctuationinhastags)

There was still one piece missing – a driveway so we can access the new garage. We wanted to continue the red brick pattern from the path up the side of the house, with the wavy pattern ending in a big circle. The council require pavers on a cross over laid in either a brick bond or herringbone pattern. By this stage, brick bond was a bit old hat for us so herringbone it was. A bit of leveling, a few lines in the sand and we were ready to go (and use up a whole lot more red bricks, freeing up a little more space!)

Sketching out the design for the driveway

Knew all those small little bricks would come in handy (#hoarder?)

Greg working himself into a corner

The path turns into a circle

Laying along the lines

The circles starting to come into shape

It was a cold, wet and rainy day when the granos came to do the kerb – perfect for concrete! We certainly made them work this day. Pouring the concrete was one thing, stopping it from running down the street was quite another. We ended up rigging up a makeshift tent from scaffold and a big tarp to allow them to finish off the shaping and for the concrete to set.

Pouring concrete for the kerb

In the rain

Damming the flood waters

Temporary storm water diversion works

Cover up the new concrete so it doesn’t wash away!

It was much sunnier the following days, which made laying the bricks for the rest of the driveway a lot easier. Once all the bricks were cut and laid we swept some dry, fine sand mixed with a little concrete over to set them in place. As we were laying the bricks, Greg noticed that some had thumb prints in the corners of the bricks at various angles. A bit of research on the internet tells us that these were probably hand made bricks, over 100 years old, with thumb prints made by the person pushing the bricks out of their moulds. I wonder if that person ever imagined that they would be used 100 years later in a driveway, driven over by an automobile?

New layer of yellow sand ready for the driveway

Getting ready to lay the second half of the driveway

Screeding and compacting the base

The driveway is nearly complete

The rest of the driveway meets with the bricks that were laid the previous week

Fits like a glove

The join between circle and herringbone patterns

The final design – circles and herringbone

We’re pretty pleased with how the pattern turned out and the feedback from our neighbours and everybody else who walks up and down on our street on a regular basis indicates that they like it too. We are also very pleased to be making a (we hope) positive contribution to the streetscape now that we can see the front of the house and verandah unobscured. Greg and I would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to everybody who put up with the road base on the foot path for far longer than we had intended with good grace and good humour.