Sidewalk finished or not ?

For now yes it's finished. I plan on adding some critters, flowers or weeds in the cracks but it is just to hot to do any more with it right now. As you can see it didn't workout like I had planned but I love it! After all those years of looking at that dull white walk I now feel like I'm looking at a master piece .. lol

and I see new flower borders going down the sides this fall ...

here's what it looked like Saturday afternoon ... I was not happy at all that I had gotten so off track.. and I hadn't even been drinking .. I think my brain was sun fried at this point .. I taped off what I wanted to keep and looked at it again Sunday just to make sure I couldn't live with it like this and the answer was no way !!

I covered it with the Olive wood stain. It took 2 coats .. Again not happy! After thinking about it all night I decided it had to have a clear defining point of separation.

So here we go again ... this time I took a bottle of Burnt Umber craft paint added a little water then I painted a band all the way around the Olive wood.. It looked OK but still not the polished finished look I wanted. So I mix up about six different colors of craft paint and added a little of the Olive wood trying to get as close to the original concrete color and then did another band around the outside of the Burnt Umber

Now I'm a happy girl it all dried down to be the perfect color.

I'm thinking I might paint this center area to look like flagstone later on ...

OK so here's some tips and info for those that asked. The product that I used is H & C Solid Concrete Stain it is a water base product that I buy at Sherman Williams . I used this same product about 10 years ago on a slab in the backyard and it still looks just as good as it did the day we did it. The colors I used are Olive Wood and Tile Red . The first thing I did was pressure washed the concrete really good then let it dry. I went through about 10 ~ 4" foam rollers. I found the foam ones worked the best, but didn't last long. Most of my brick are 4 X 7"s

I didn't tape off my brick because that just seemed like a lot more work ..lol
I poured both colors of stain into an old Tupperware container top and just worked my roller back and forth to blend the colors so that you could see a little of both in the brick. If it had not been so hot this would have been an easy breezy project the heat was my biggest obstacle. The one thing that I didn't figure out till I was about 4 ft down the walk is I needed to be working back and forth so I would not end up with straight lines.. In other words do your first row starting from the far left then your second row starts far right and keep going back and forth..
This stain is permanent so screwing up is not really some thing you want to do. I wish I had planned my pattern out and had it on paper in front of me. I think I would have ended up a little closer to what I had envisioned. Like I said before I love it and as soon as some cooler weather returns I will be right back out there to jazz it up and to add a few rows at the end of the driveway and then about every 8ft all the way up the drive . I do plan on sealing it with the recommended sealer once I am completely finished just to be on the safe side .

Hope ya'll like it if you have any other questions please ask .

Bobbie, Beth did it turn out as good as what we saw on the tour of homes ?
My biggest task is finished for my 10 in 10 !!

Now I'm off to see if I can finish all the others in a nice cool place

I'm linking up the Power of Paint party over at Domestically Speaking

and with Miss Gina for Transformation Thursdays
Hugs from Savannah ya'll, Cherry

 UPDATE ... February 9, 2012 for some reason I keep losing the pictures in this post. Would you please leave me a comment if you can't see them. Thank you so much for stopping by.. hugs, Cherry