How to Install Cobblestone Driveway Edging | Ask This Old House

foreign hello Erica thanks for coming out all right thanks for having me nice to meet you I reached out to you guys about an issue we're having with the driveway it's starting to slope down and we need some help fixing the bricks okay so Mark as you can see here we've got this brick lined up and the retaining wall just isn't doing a good job of keeping up everything into the driveway and it's getting hard to pull into the driveway too as the Earth starts to sink a bit right so the big problem here is improper grading what I usually like to see is everything graded away from the house you can see how we have a Swale that's bringing all the water over that hump and then onto the driveway and that's what's causing all this runoff over here skipping over the brick and then hitting the lawn like that yeah I do have a plan we're gonna replace the brick with something else so why don't we get going sounds great right all right Erica before we get going ripping this brick up look at this Catskill tells us where it came from yeah you know the owners who built the home we were there from New York so they must have brought these back from their Hometown maybe bring a little piece of home to the new home [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] Erica now it's time to talk about the ingredients great this is what we're going to replace the Brickwood that's a cobblestone you can see it's a lot bigger than a brick it's a lot heavier than a brick next we have crushed stone that we're going to put in the bottom of the trench don't forget we're not below the frost line so there might the frost might throw some rocks and some Boulders around this gravel will help to absorb that right and it's also going to help us with drainage too so once we get that in we're going to Tamp it down next thing we're going to do is mix up concrete that concrete is going to go right in the trench and on top of that that's where we're going to put our Cobblestone great and then we're going to take this rebar we're going to put it in the trench the entire length and we're going to put it on both sides of the Cobblestone again all those ingredients are just going to lock this cobblestone in so any issue that you had before you should never hear again I love it foreign this is the fun part we're going to be mixing the concrete Great what I love about this concrete is it's pre-mixed so all we have to do is spread this out and add water all right and what's the difference between like this and like a cement actually that's a great question you see all those stones that's what makes the concrete so we have Portland cement there's already a little bit of sand in there and this is what makes it concrete Great these don't Wow Let's mix it yep so just flip it around a little bit [Applause] I'm going to add a little bit of water and we always tell everybody don't add all the water at once because you can't take it out and we don't want the concrete to get too wet yeah but but consistency we always tell to kick it around scrape it off the walls of the wheelbarrow I'm going to add a little more water that ought to do it so the Cobblestone is set in a soldier course position all that is is a brick or a cobblestone standing upright in front of the Cobblestone you see how we're going to keep the concrete low that's so when we take our new pea Stone to level off the driveway we're going to be able to sink into this trench and it's just going to solidify our pea Stone just a little bit more but on the back side of this Cobblestone we're going to put a lot of the concrete we're going to bring it up to grade and then we're actually going to pitch it down to grade and that way when the water gets through these cobblestones it's going to continue to run and it won't build up as ice all right Erica you have the re-ride so what we want to do is we want to overlap a couple feet this is tie wire and I have a special tool that you can pick up actually at a hardware store and hook both eyes that's it let the tool twist oh yeah good yeah that's great yeah so now we just lay it into the little concrete that we poured okay and now we're going to pour concrete on top of that so Erica all we're gonna do I'm gonna dump a little gravel and this is going to top everything off so I'll dump it and you can rake it out great there you go kind of filling this in leveling out the driveway a bit yep all right Erica we are done what do you think it looks really good all right well we gave you a nice little feature here we took the Cobblestone and we lowered them that way you can get a wheel barrel in and you can get a wheelbarrow out great idea I love it this is a lot of work but it looks really good Mark okay well I'm glad you're happy and if you have any questions about your house please give us a call until next time I'm Mark McCullough for ask This Old House thanks for watching this old house has got a video for just about every Home Improvement project so be sure to check out 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Channel: This Old House

Views: 106,558

Keywords: This Old House, Home Improvement, DIY, Construction, Ask This Old House, Building, driveways, edging, cobblestones, masonry, Mark McCullough

Id: th4JIQrySkg

Length: 6min 42sec (402 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 16 2022