Enter the Greenhouse - up cycling the entries

Summertime has come early to Alaska and because I have a personal rule about not planting anything out before Memorial Day Weekend, it has enabled me to finish two projects that were started last year.  One I actually finished last fall but didn't get to finish the up-cycle on the left overs!  The concrete slab under my front stairs had been in a sad state of deterioration for a couple of years.  Pitted, crumbling, and looking terrible as well as being too small for the space that it should have taken up, I decided to make a new front porch patio with red square bricks.  I started by loosening the concrete slab part under the stairs and leveling the gravel for the bricks as best I could with the slab still in place.  It was part of the system to hold up the stairs after all!  You can't see it in the photo below but the gray slab portion is cracked all the way across.

Below is the lovely finished product patio!  I love how it turned out and should it deteriorate I can replace just one brink and have an easier time.  The slab was about 4 inches thick and weighed about as much as a dump truck I'm sure!

This is the two (plus) pieces of the slab that came out of the area near the stairs.  I moved them over by the green house with the intention of up-cycling them as part of the greenhouse entry way which I have been struggling with.

Above you can see how the pieces of the current green house entry have not been fitting together and my gravel is all over the place and the plastic wont stay where it belongs and its a hot mess!

It also makes it sort of a trip-up area for me as the surfaces are pretty uneven and it's an area that really gets used a lot.

I scraped back the gravel and plastic onto the current patio area which I am keeping - these are blue board slabs with 1/2" of concrete on top.  It is the same thing I have inside the greenhouse as a floor.  It works really well to keep the frost heaves down and to hold the heat once it is warm.  I dug out the gravel and sand underneath just so the sections of slab would fit in.  I did have to juggle carefully the fuel line to the oil barrel which sits near the greenhouse and had to go under the slab sections.

I did replace the plastic underneath and the pea gravel around it and I am really happy with the outcome.  It also filled in a low spot that was really bothersome on the path to the greenhouse and back.  I will be filling the crack between the slabs with some thyme so it smells good when you walk on it.  Yum!

  

Even Ripley the little rescue dog loves the area now!  Cool and shady on this side of the greenhouse and now nice and neat, and made use of some old concrete in a new spot!