An Invitation to a Door

One of the projects that I really wanted to get done in advance of the Derby party was a walkway to the front door. No one ever uses our front door because the only way to access it was to tromp across the lawn:

while the side door has a lovely (though somewhat pitted) little path up to it.

And while I don't mind people using the side door in the least, I thought it would be nice for visitors to have the option of entering via my lovely new pink living room, where the coat closet happens to be!

So last weekend Hubby and I headed over to Home Depot and picked up landscaping fabric, a rock rake, and 40 bags of small quartz stones. Since the only car we own is the Passat, we rented the Home Depot truck to get it home, and let me tell you that that was just about the best $20 we've ever spent! The side of the truck dropped down, so we just pulled right into the driveway and stood in the bed to chuck the bags right next to where we were putting the walkway!

I figured there was some hard work ahead of us, but we just needed to get the turf up, not really dig, so how hard could that be?

OY!

HARD!

I think digging a hole would have been easier than trying to get the grass up evenly!
But I'm getting ahead of myself...
We started digging:

and tried to get the sod up enough that we could replant it in some of the (many many) bare patches around the lawn.
Despite our having really just thrown it down there it's now actually growing in pretty nicely.

Digging took us about four hours!

Hubby was all for calling it a day when the digging was done, but I was having none of that! The hard part was over, and we were going to finish that walkway before nightfall!

So... we laid out the landscaping fabric and started spreading the rock. I forgot to buy ground staples to hold the fabric down, so we anchored it with stones and poured the rock on as fast as we could!

There I am in my super-chic yard-working outfit...
Since I was the one all gung-ho to the work done, I was in charge of spreading the rock while Hubby was in charge of the camera!
But that was ok with me since it was kind of my idea in the first place! And sure enough just as the sun was dipping down below the trees,
the walkway was complete!!

YAY!!!

And you know what? The very next day TWO people (the FEDEX guy, and another guy trying to sell me a lawn...) used my front door!

Well, that's the walkway! Check back to see what I've been up to with the garden!
If you want to see some more fantastic transformations stop by Susan's place at Between Naps on the Porch for Metamorphosis Monday!
Thanks for stopping by!