Day 656: Sweeping up

With the subsurface stuff all sorted, it was back to business for Michael and Co. First they laid down a cement base for the pathway. This needed to dry for a day. My hope was that we wouldn’t find little footsteps from kids, cats, gremlins etc. in the work – but luckily it had time to dry before getting trampled on.

The next day (Saturday), the team came back and went to work on the tiling. This was impressive. 3 guys – one cutting the tiles, one distributing and one laying them down – super efficient. I was going to take a picture of them working but it went so fast, I only got a quick snap out of the window before it was all done. 3 hours in total to do the entire pathway. And the work was nothing short of perfect.

We had deliberated for quite a while on the design and colour scheme. There are probably hundreds if not thousands of options to choose from – see here.

We went fairly plain as it suits us best – small tiles on the border, large ones in the centre and a red border to go with the red bricks (our little bit of flare). Seeing the final product now, it was a great choice I think.

If that wasn’t enough for one day, another team was working on laying down the paving slabs. We went with rough granite as it, well, looks nicer. Not as cheap as the normal blocks, but as we saw it, if we’re going through all the effort, we might as well splurge on getting nice blocks. I’m hoping too that as the granite formed over millions of years, it should last for a few more in our driveway.

By the end of the day, the main part of the pathway was tiled and the driveway was all blocked in. The borders were embedded in cement and sharp sand was set between the blocks to keep everything put. The girls were of course intrigued by all of this and wanted to get in on the sand sweeping action.   

As the guys lost a good day due to London's mini-monsoon earlier in the week, they unfortunately had to sacrifice their Sunday to keep to plan. For the record, this wasn’t me pushing them. The plan for Sunday was finish off the edges and tiling the porch and finally putting down a coating on the granite slabs to make them super tough and also give them a nice dark colour.

The guys happy with their work (as were we).

And the look of the house changed once again. You would hardly think this was the same house from a couple of weeks ago.