Mother's Day DIY

Please note: that is DIY not DUI!
Most of my family members know that I have a secret addiction to Home and Garden Television (HGTV). In fact, it is so severe that my husband has threatened to put a parental control on that channel. I turn on HGTV while I'm cooking dinner, folding laundry, even reading a book. It's like wallpaper or background noise. Actually, on the redecorating shows, all one needs to watch are the first and last five minutes (the before and after). The work part in the middle is boring. So on Mother's Day, when my husband suggested that we tackle a little DIY (do it yourself) project of our own, I said "Sure."

Our front stoop, made of bricks set in a pattern in sand and surrounded by cemented pavers, was buckling. Our DIY project was to take out all the bricks set in sand, keep them in the same pattern, find the problem, and fix it (boring part that I never watch), then put the bricks back.

Below are the bricks that have been taken off the stoop.



So what we found was an area in one corner of the sand where it was being washed away along with the crushed rock base that was coming out the side of the stoop. The person who originally did the job (who oddly enough is no longer in business) left a big hole between the cemented pavers and the house. How to fix it? Well, personally, I would have called someone in the business to fix it. But my husband saw it as a challenge. He thought about it for a while and then uttered the famous words of all DIY-ers, "I'm going to Lowe's."

I stayed at home because my job in this project, in addition to helping to keep the pattern straight, was to brush the accumulated crap off every single brick. When my husband returned about an hour later, he had a bucket of quick fix cement that dries in about 5 minutes. He filled the hole between the house and the pavers with the cement. After it dried, he added more sand to the center of the stoop.

[At this point we took a little break thanks to some friends stopping by. They laughed at us because they are former neighbors who now live in a condo community and no longer have maintenance chores.]

Now came the job of carefully putting all the bricks back in the same pattern and at the same level. Ultimately we succeeded, but it was a tight squeeze getting the last few in. The last step was pouring sand over the whole thing to fill in the cracks between the bricks. We think it was a job well done, but only time will tell if the bricks will buckle or hold their places.

Finished stoop, still sandy

Now this project could have been one small segment of an HGTV show called "Curb Appeal." My question is "How can a five minute segment on TV take four hours in real life?" Reality TV? I think NOT!