Jane is working toward the Halloween release of her vampire book—which is NOT Twilight, in any way, shape, or form. You know Jane. This is HER take on the mythos.
I’m doing my own spooky release: Rusalka’s nearly ready. I’ve got the text in shape and I’m now working on Chernevog in my [insert laugh] evening breaktime, as Jane’s been working on a painted version of the Rusalka sketch I did in her [also insert laugh] evening breaktime. In between working on our regular stuff.
Meanwhile we just haven’t sold anything from Closed Circle Bazaar in a month, so if you’re looking for a sweatshirt or longsleeved tee as cold weather approaches, do remember we have some really pretty designs.
We’re approaching winter shutdown on the front yard project, just a little weedcloth and gravel to put down.
Our neighbor gave us a pickup load of fireplace brick, from the removal of his chimney. That may, if we can make it work, resurface our rather cracked front walk. Free is good. Free is very good.
Jane’s birthday is coming, and I got her a nice tabletop electric patio heater, so we can go on having breakfast by the pond until the snow makes that impractical. It doesn’t throw a lot of heat, but enough to take the edge off. Ilisidi would disdain it, of course, for a balcony breakfast, but we appreciate a little warmth.
Did you ever get those weedcloth pins? If not, there is a place just south of me that sells the very long ones, as well as the short ones. They look like miniature croquet wickets. http://www.amleonard.com is their website.
Joe, we got them, and it’s Amazon these days—their ad on Amazon said ‘703 landscape fabric pins…….13.00’. Well, what would you think they meant? 703 pins, right?
This, after we got a box of 75 way heavy pins [too heavy to return] for waaaay too much shipping: ” Hello,
I show that the 703 to which you are referring is the manufacturer part number of the item, not the number of items you received. As this order was fulfilled by Amazon, you will need to contact them regarding any return or problems with the order. Their number is 866-216-1072.
Thank you,
Deerso Customer Care”
Isn’t that just ducky? So we have ordered again—from Amazon, which is the only place we can find them, from another company. We need about 500 of them, and we hope this ad is correct.
I’ve written to Amazon. I doubt it will do a damn bit of good.
My CafePress goodies arrived yesterday: two mugs, a T-shirt and a sweater. They look fine!
I’m very glad with my own mug and shirt, and happy to have the nice gifts for dad and my brother. They were very carefully packaged for the overseas shipping, and arrived in excellent condition.
I’m so glad to hear that, Hanneke! Hurrah!
Well, I saw a model that AM Leonard sells, their model number 616AP ,they’re 500 to the box, and a box is $28.49, and weighs 25 pounds.
also, my mistake on the website, it’s http://www.amleo.com but I think the one I gave you will default to the correct site.
Actually, just realized AM Leonard IS the company we ordered from once these proved not what we wanted.
Well, to my amazement, Amazon came through: our other pin order has shipped, and they have given me a call tag for the other 75 pin-package. They’re going to pay shipping.
Sadly you will not like the result of using building bricks for paving brick. The precis is that building brick is soft, paving brick is hard.
Don’t so it.
Phil Brown
Thanks for that heads-up, Phil: we’ll take a look at that issue; this dismantled fireplace used outsized brick that is almost a hundred years old, so it is either harder or softer from its age and the fireplace use. If it proves too fragile for pavers, we can always use it elsewhere. This is going to have to be a brick overlay on concrete, already not the optimum situation, but there’s no way Jane and I can take that old sidewalk up, and it’s cracked across in 3 places, so it’s not the best-looking thing; but if the fireplace bricks don’t work, we’re stuck with the grotty concrete walk cracks and all.
Carolyn, please see what OSGuy thinks about taking up that old front walk. He might have some good options for you.
Unfortunately brick does not age like wine. Paving brick is fired differently than building brick. If you lay some on concrete and walk on them they will break easily.
Phil Brown
Unfortunately, you need a 12 or 16 pound sledge hammer to break up the concrete, and then a heavy wheelbarrow to haul it somewhere else, maybe as an alternate fountain. Leonard’s isn’t too far from my home, about 12 miles, I like going in to look at the stuff, but you can’t go back like you could a Lowe’s. So, I just go into the showroom, tell them what I want, and they bring it out for me.
Glad to hear about Rusalka coming up; I’ll be buying that when it’s available.
I can lend you a jack hammer. You’ll have to pick it up from here in NE Oklahoma.
Lol! I don’t think I could have used a jackhammer when I was 20.
There’s always a brawny high school / college kid willing to use one for walking-around money. DH stays and watches to make sure there are no injuries.
Ah, if only you could wait for the next Shejicon! the attendees could all take a whack at the sidewalk in exchange for BBQ. Sort of like singing for your supper.
Now that would be a sight! We nearly lost Bret in a mudhole at the last one! I’m not sure he’s forgiven me for that one!
When I was a little kid, my dad got a huge load of old, interior brick from a building in old Montreal (we lived just outside the city then). He spent weeks carefully laying that into a huge, lovely patio at our new house. Then winter came. Then spring came. But the brick went.. into spals and pieces and crumbles and soft, crunchy uselessness. My dad was a seriously unhappy camper. He had to clean up and dispose of our entire, gorgeous soft, old brick patio. Then he called a cement truck and they poured a white, boring but completely sturdy cement patio. We put a little penny in the corner with the date on it. It and the patio stayed in place for years.
My dad says to you, posthumously, “Don’t do it.”
That is certainly a cautionary tale. Sigh. The brick is certainly serviceable and we can always use it to build up something like an edge near the street, but there is one thing in this story: we have neither the energy nor the good weather left to use it this year, so it must spend one winter in a very large stack by the garage entry out in the weather. We will take account of the condition of the brick next spring (and this winter, being a La Nina year, should be another snowpocalypse.) Then we will have some idea how it weathers.
How badly cracked is the sidewalk? Concrete repair filler is available that works surprisingly well, we used some on a big crack in our garage. It comes as a liquid/slurry in a squeeze bottle; we got ours from Lowes. You might then consider painting the sidewalk, use paint made for that purpose. Of course, then you have to keep touching-up the paint, but if the sidewalk is too awful otherwise, it might be worth it. A house we previously lived in had a sidewalk painted by a former owner, it needed new paint every two or three years. The trouble with putting mulch on the sidewalk is that if you use the sidewalk in the winter, it’s hard to shovel snow off of mulch. 😀
We’ve thought about it, but it would still not be a good patch because the breaks are jagged, nothing like a straight line. And you’re right: that’s why we’re not mulching over it.
if it’s firebrick, it would be hard enough, and look very nice. of course here we don’t have your winter temps, and I am only speaking from UK experience. I have paving bricks, and I regret them – it looks like my local garage forecourt – very boring.
I have a feeling your garage forecourt is much nicer than our sidewalk.
If the bricks are the kind with holes in them, personal experience says they won’t last long; even laying them on their sides doesn’t help, because rain and snowmelt gets in the holes and freezes. Sounds like it will get a good test this winter.
Another thing to consider is that the bricks are a couple of inches thick at minimum. That means that the first step up from where there is no brick will be that much higher of a step, and the first step down from where there is no brick will be that much shorter. It can be easy to trip on that kind of arrangement if one is not paying attention.
No holes. It’s fireplace brick, the old-fashioned sort, no holes, very used-brick, looks like deliberately distressed pavers. We have thought about the tripping part, however, and if there is one thing I wish we could break up and get rid of, it’s those builders-special concrete steps at the retaining wall. I’d love to redo that as the same sort of steps as the retaining wall, but that set of steps will take a nuclear strike to move. I don’t know how they got them in place, but a Caterpillar had to figure in the operation somewhere.
Hmmm. Looking at Jane’s photo of the retaining wall…
If you can’t remove or demolish the steps, could you cover over them? I expect that the concrete sides of the steps wouldn’t make that easy, you might have to work within them, then build them up in some decorative fashion. But since the bottom of the steps doesn’t need to meet a public sidewalk (doesn’t look that way, at least, from the photo?) the new steps could extend out a bit beyond the existing ones (as long as you don’t feel like you are stepping right out onto the street). So, depending on how much higher the top of the proposed brick sidewalk would be, you might be able to do it. Measure everything, dust off your geometry…and check your local building code, there is probably a maximum height limit for each step (riser), which could end up making you need another step. There is probably also a minimum width (tread), which would impact the total length of the whole operation, again, if you needed to add another step. 🙂
Rethinking the concrete sides…at some point on the way down, the new steps would cover them up. Then you could bring the new steps across or around to meet the retaining wall. The remaining visible concrete sides might make an edge for a built-in planter. One of those things one needs to play with to decide.
Those concrete steps are a one-piece mold, out of incredibly dense concrete. We should be so lucky as to have these things deteriorate. Not so our walk, of course. But there is no public sidewalk, and that’s another big item on our to-do list—getting the front ‘walk’ redone: right now it’s taken up and standing in gravel piles.
Poor Bret, first the Little Spokane River (“I almost died!”), then the mudhole. Just remember, Bret, Jane always liked you best!