Well, that’s another sympathetic restoration (i.e retaining as much of the original tiles as possible) of a once sad, neglected and tired-looking Victorian front path, completed.
There are so many of these beautiful Victorian front paths all-over London, most are of the black and white variety, but there’s a fair smattering of multi-coloured ones too. I imagine the coloured ones were more expensive when originally commissioned.
A friend of mine recently had a completely new tiled path laid, it cost her a cool £3,500, it does look splendid though and has certainly added to the value of the house.
Laying down a completely new path is a job for the experts, I simply revive neglected ones for a fraction of the price. Often the problem I find is, once I lift a cracked or badly broken tile, it has a domino effect, whereupon, all the surrounding tiles will come away with it too… grrr!
This isn’t a problem in itself, but it does mean the job takes longer to complete. So, I’ll clean and re-lay them if still in good enough condition, as I prefer to keep as much of the original 140-year-old plus ceramic tiles as possible, they have character and a story to tell; who knows, perhaps Oscar Wilde walked upon them once?
I had to giggle recently when a client called to inquired, ‘Hello, is that the Singing Gardener?’ ‘Eh no, I’m a gardener who sings,’ I replied. Then again, if plants like to be talked to, surely they’d enjoy being sung to too.
