Flagstone Porch: Part One

Last weekend Dave and I set to work on creating an extension to our front porch. The existing concrete porch is very small, with hardly any room to park a stroller. Since we want to lay flag stones for a walkway in the front yard, we decided that creating a flagstone porch would be nice.

Here's what it looked like before we began. There was a 4" thick concrete walkway hugging the house that we had to remove. Whoever built these houses wasn't thinking when they designed this walkway...who walks in a 90 degree turn?
Dave manned the sledge hammer while I put my weight on the pry bar to lift the slabs of concrete up off the ground so he could smack them and then I hauled the pieces to a pile near the garbage can. It only took him about 2.5 hours to get it all done.

The concrete was poured around the base of the water line near the garage. Hoping we wouldn't break the pipe, Dave carefully chiseled a line around it before sledge-hammering the concrete away. Luckily it didn't break...but even if it had we could have fixed it. After all, he works for the water company! (When we eventually replace the driveway--it is massively cracked--we'll replace the entire water line, all the way back to the meter.)
Then Dave installed a wooden frame of treated lumber, much like he did for the gravel paths in the utility yard.
Then he tamped down a bunch of aggregate/road base.

By the time he got that part done we had to get showered and ready for our first birthing class.