How to Build a Brick Sidewalk

I always wanted a brick sidewalk. So when I heard that a friends neighbor was giving away old paver bricks. I put dibs on them right away, surely I could build a little walkway around the side of our house? Then I realized this meant I had to haul bricks ASAP, find a place to store them until use, then figure out how in the world to do this.

So I drove my husbands truck to the lady's house and started loading bricks. They were so big and heavy I could hardly hold one in each hand. I carried them 2 by 2 to the bed of the truck and started stacking them.

When I got home I tried the wheelbarrow to move them 60 feet to the site. I was able to handle about 15 before it was too heavy to push. This wasn't working well. So I decided to carefully maneuver the truck sideways in the street, back up over the devils strip and sidewalk, and back up into the side yard, trying to miss the tree, hedges, house, flowerbeds, etc. It really wasn't that hard, just something I'd never done. Now I just had to off-load into stacks by the hedges.

I repeated these steps 3 more times, until I had gathered every brick she had. Now I started thinking about the pattern, width, supplies needed, and why the hell am I so impulsive?

I dug out the area where I wanted the walk, about 8" deep X 44" wide X 2 miles long, and wheelbarrowed about 16-20 loads of sod and soil to the compost pile 200 feet in the back yard. I am a fairly sturdy person, but this was hard work! The bricks were about 4x4x8. I figured on a base of 4" of sand, then the bricks, would make the walk pretty level with the grass.

The next week, I started looking for sand. I had no idea how much I'd need. It turned out all the playbox bags of sand had been sold out for the season in my area. Then I discovered our town has a sandpit. This place had huge mountains of rocks, gravel, sand and big machinery. I found their business trailer, parked and went in. A woman told me sand was $17.50 for a truck load. Perfect, all the sand I could need for only $17.50. She told me to drive on around the other side (she pointed to a mountain of sand behind me), and someone would help me there.

I did that, and within a minute a huge scooper machine drove up and dug into the mountain, backed up and approached the side of my truck. I started getting a little scared. The amount of sand he'd just scooped didn't look like much at all, just a corner of the scoop actually. But he raised it and drove forward until the scoop's shadow covered the truck, and started to dump it. The noise, shaking, and feeling the truck lower under the sand's weight scared me, and after just a few seconds I held my hand up to stop. Just because I wasn't sure how much I could take or the truck could take! The guy backed away and drove off.

So here I was with several tons of sand. I could tell when I put the truck into drive that this might be tricky going home. I drove very slowly and the engine whined. I started braking about 100 feet before each traffic light or stop sign. When I got home, I repeated my operation of backing into the side yard. Now I had to empty the truck (groan). Out came the wheel barrow again. Shovel, fill barrow, carry it to the plastic. I had laid out a plastic tarp because I didn't want the sand to melt into the grass. I kept that up until the truck was empty and I had an enormous sand pile.

Now my husband started getting involved. Ahem. He tried to describe how to build the base. He wanted me to make it slightly higher in the middle so water would run off. He wanted me to level and tamp the soil, then fill the area with sand and tamp it hard and smooth again, then plunk plunk plunk, lay the bricks in place. He said that would be the easiest. Oh, and to use a level going both the length and width so the angles of the bricks would be uniform.

So I leveled and tamped the soil. I lined my path with plastic so grass wouldn't grow up through the bricks. Then I filled the area with sand, tamped that, and finally it was time to start laying the bricks down. This finally felt like the fun part. I had a little stool I sat on to save what was left of my back. I'd carry 8-10 bricks to the work area, and start arranging them. Gradually it started to take shape. Carry bricks, place each one, place the level, hammer the brick (with rubber mallet) and check the level, over and over. I forgot to add I lined the walk edges with plastic landscape border as I went, kept it pushed up against the brick and stabilizing it with sand filled on the outer sides as I progressed. There might be a better way, but with the curves, this was the only method I could think of.

I got as far as the patio to the gate, about 25 feet, and stopped for the summer. I was exhausted. I still had half the walk left undone but my heart wasn't in it anymore. Except for another fun part. I threw buckets of sand over the finished bricks. When it dried out, I swept it, and the sand filled in the cracks and stabilized the bricks. It looks wonderful when it's done!

Finally, as the weather started to cool down, I bricked the rest of the walk toward the front of our house. It was one of the hardest projects I've ever attempted and it was worth the aching muscles, and swollen fingers. I go outside and walk that walk several times a day. I love how the bricks are all different earthy tones, that a little moss has established itself, that my cats use that walk, that it looks so beautiful, and that I built it all by myself for about $17.50. I counted the bricks this morning and was surprised there were exactly 400.