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Howdy! Sorry I've been offline lately. Much work-related stuff I don't want to talk about, plus a very busy couple of weeks. This week it's Spring Break at KU, so I've taken the time away from the office to build a brick sidewalk in my back yard from the carport and garage up to the house. Many thanks to the wonderful ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cba1282zyx for all the help in collecting bricks and other supplies (which was a deathmarch), cleaning them up, laying the path framework, and putting down the walk. Also thanks to madmatmax for dropping by today to help finish setting the bricks. Woohoo, I finally have a non-muddy walkway between the garage and house! This is a big deal in Kansas, especially in my neighborhood, as spring and fall = endless mud which = filthy floors. Sometimes the back yard has standing water, because the clay-heavy ground doesn't drain well, so anyone passing from driveway or garage to house had to cross a moat. No longer!
A discovery worth sharing: One can no longer buy actual bricks from home-improvement stores. Nor at building-supply stores (new or recycled). Nor at places with "masonry" in their name. Not even at brick stores, fer gosh sake! I kid you not. The "Lawrence Kansas" brick manufactury has ceased production, and the other local-ish brickmaker only sells wholesale. Everyone else only sells crappy cement lumps that aren't even the same size as real bricks. I already had enough bricks to do most of the walk, so I just needed to buy another 100 or so. Who knew that would become an all-day marathon of frustration?
Happily, each place provided tips to the next places, which finally led to the one store that still sells baked-clay bricks to regular customers here in Lawrence: Capitol Concrete. They carry all kinds of bricks, new and old, paving and building, concrete and clay. I bought 150 nice, dark-red bricks that look like they formerly served in a chimney. Two trips in the Saab later, we resumed laying the walk. A few hours later - viola! Done!
Next: Insulating the non-insulated roof over the living room. After that: Finishing building the Newport's 383. That's more than plenty for the rest of Spring Break, methinks, especially because I need to do a bunch of day-job work tomorrow. Once that's done, it's back to home improvement.
Chris
cba1282zyx for all the help in collecting bricks and other supplies (which was a deathmarch), cleaning them up, laying the path framework, and putting down the walk. Also thanks to madmatmax for dropping by today to help finish setting the bricks. Woohoo, I finally have a non-muddy walkway between the garage and house! This is a big deal in Kansas, especially in my neighborhood, as spring and fall = endless mud which = filthy floors. Sometimes the back yard has standing water, because the clay-heavy ground doesn't drain well, so anyone passing from driveway or garage to house had to cross a moat. No longer!A discovery worth sharing: One can no longer buy actual bricks from home-improvement stores. Nor at building-supply stores (new or recycled). Nor at places with "masonry" in their name. Not even at brick stores, fer gosh sake! I kid you not. The "Lawrence Kansas" brick manufactury has ceased production, and the other local-ish brickmaker only sells wholesale. Everyone else only sells crappy cement lumps that aren't even the same size as real bricks. I already had enough bricks to do most of the walk, so I just needed to buy another 100 or so. Who knew that would become an all-day marathon of frustration?
Happily, each place provided tips to the next places, which finally led to the one store that still sells baked-clay bricks to regular customers here in Lawrence: Capitol Concrete. They carry all kinds of bricks, new and old, paving and building, concrete and clay. I bought 150 nice, dark-red bricks that look like they formerly served in a chimney. Two trips in the Saab later, we resumed laying the walk. A few hours later - viola! Done!
Next: Insulating the non-insulated roof over the living room. After that: Finishing building the Newport's 383. That's more than plenty for the rest of Spring Break, methinks, especially because I need to do a bunch of day-job work tomorrow. Once that's done, it's back to home improvement.
Chris
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