Recycling Concrete Sidewalks

[Jafo]

When we bought our home a few years back, it came with an above ground pool. I despised that thing. It was rickety and an eyesore. One of the first projects I had was to tear it down. It originally butted up against a deck off of our house, so after I took it down we had just a round circle of sand left. I thought for a while of making a small patio with a fire pit. I love sitting around a campfire at night with friends/family!

After pricing it out, it just seemed ridiculous that I would have to spend like $2,000 to get this accomplished. A contractor friend of mine told me that he had a huge pile of old sidewalks from some past projects. He had just dumped them on his lot thinking he might need them for hard fill one day. I asked him if I could use some to make pavers out of. He not only said yes, but dumped off a huge pile of them in my yard. Well, there was no backing out then.

Using a small sledge, I broke the pieces into odd shapes and then laid them out over the sand where the pool used to be:





Then I filled the voids with some granite sand, which is basically a byproduct at the local quarry here. It compacts down real tight, almost like cement:



At that point, I had basically spent $0 on the project, so I splurged and got prefab fire pit blocks and put that in the center:





Then I put some soil around the edges and seeded it:







The entire project came in at a little under $300.00 and a few pounds of sweat from my sons and I. I wish I had some pics of it all laid out with the new outdoor bar we built and furniture, but that will have to wait until the summer I guess.

[CraftyCadence]

That's absolutely gorgeous! What a clever idea!

[Dan R-M]

Wicked. I've heard scrounged concrete referred to as "urbanite" which makes it sound, if not exotic, at least technically reputable.
So when are you putting one of these in at the yurt

[Jafo]

LOL, no chance. That's a lot of work when you are home, much less miles out in the woods haha!