Apartment Entry

Some green and a broom go a long way.

Before:

This project was actually done in two phases. The first was the simple cleanup and planting above.  The second we just completed this spring:

Removal of the sunken field brick in the stoop.  Getting them out was fairly simple, since all the grout joints were broken and there was a void underneath that was never filled properly before the bricks were set.

The difficulty began with cleaning grout off the bricks one at a time so we could reuse them.  Takes a while with a hammer and chisel, and a few sore fingers.

Trying to give everything a real setting bed.  I really had no idea what I was doing, so I watched a handful of youtube videos and picked the points from each that seemed smart.

Afterwards we poured 4" of concrete over the crushed stone for the setting bed. Already having our form work in place sped things along.

This was actually a real pain- since we'd never done concrete work before, we decided to mix it by hand in a large plastic storage bin.  You get tired out in about 10 minutes doing it that way.

The next weekend we mixed a bit of mortar and set the bricks in place:

Another week, and we grouted between the bricks.  This was pretty challenging since we had to work fast so the mortar wouldn't set.  Using a putty knife to fill each joint individually is surprisingly tedious.  We probably had the mortar mixed wrong.  Whatever.

After:

Done!