Paver Sidewalk

So this whole blog is supposed to be about making our house different than everyone else's in the neighborhood, blah, blah, blah.  Well...sometimes we do just the opposite, and try to keep up with the Jones'.

When we first moved in, we noticed that a few people (very few) had these lovely paver walkways from the back of their homes down to their docks.   We loved the idea and secretly added it to the "would like to do someday" list.  My Hubby goes down to the dock to fish a lot...it was the reason we bought this house...so as you could imagine, with all the walking back and forth from the house, it did not take long to create a faint path in the grass from our screened-in area to the dock.  Not that big of a deal, but you can see it nonetheless.

Anyway, about a month ago I noticed a group of workers installing a paver walkway for a neighbor across the canal.  Several days later, they were at another neighbor's house doing the same thing.  A week after that, a third neighbor was getting it done!  My initial thought was that either these guys were installing the pavers super cheap or the economy was rebounding...regardless, I sent my Hubby to check it out.

The guys installing the pavers were more than happy to give us a quote.  It turns out the price was less than 1/2 of what we expected.  Half!  This never happens...we normally guess the price and it turns out to be double what we were expecting. 

I guess we were just so giddy at the price, we hardly discussed it before we were handing over a deposit check.  The guys were out installing my new walkway a week later...and they finished it in one day! 

This first pic (the "before" shot) was taken before we moved in....two things give that fact away:  the grass needs to be mowed and there is mildew on the dock, two things my Type-A Hubby would never let happen :-).



This fuzzy pic was apparently taken from inside the screen.


My new paver sidewalk looks fabulous...except for one problem. It is currently a walkway to nowhere. BAHAHAHA! You read that right, to save even more money we had the guys install the walkway to the back of the screened-in pool area down to the dock, verses from a current door on the side of the house to the dock. Its about half the distance, which means half the price.  Sounds crazy, but we can install another screen door for cheap, so it just made the most financial sense to go that route. Hopefully the screen people will get here soon cause it looks pretty silly as it is now.

Paver walkway and path to nowhere.

And do you know what?  During that one day of installation, we had two...yep, two neighbors stop by to ask the guys to quote them too.  I've heard through the grapevine that both have decided to proceed with the walkways at their houses too.  Hmm...one day you are trying to keep up with the Jones' and the next day you become the Jones.  Whatever....in this day and age of foreclosures (read: dilapidating houses) abound, it is great to see people doing stuff to improve their property.

Have you ever found yourself trying to keep up with the Jones?   Do share.