Moving a sidewalk in Hoquiam

Over the July 4th weekend, Janice, Stephen, Vivian and I went to Hoquiam to work on landscaping. I had assumed that this would be somewhat idyllic work, perhaps preparing the odd bed for fall planting under Janice's direction. But Stephen had other ideas.

What's wrong with this picture?

The new porch was designed so that there is now a slight offset between the front door and porch stairs. Consequently, the sidewalk no longer met the stairs. So, rather than install a new sidewalk at considerable time and expense, we decided to move the existing old sidewalk sideways about two feet. Of course, nobody really knew what they were doing, and Janice typically kept her thoughts to herself.
The next morning, we started by removing the sod and soil from where we wanted to shove the walk. The sod was remarkably tough because the area had not had rain for weeks.

Then, laboriously, we freed the walk, slab by slab, and occasionally broken bit by broken bit. Steve used an enormous iron bar to lever the slab sideways, half inch by half inch, while Vivian and I kept our shovels under the slab's front corners to form a kind of sled so that the first corners to bump into the new location did not dig in, but moved relatively smoothly. Just moving the first slab at all was a victory and called for a break.
We soon learned how to position the slab, getting it settled on gravel and sand. Rather than viewing the broken slabs (broken for decades, likely) as disasters, we thought of them as puzzles to reassemble.
The end of the old walk (out by the street) was too broken to be reused, so we broke it up and removed it, leveled the soil, and found enough old bricks to fill the gap.

We used some bags of sand to fill the walk's cracks, old and new, and then let the sand settle.
Steve, Vivian and Janice got a pickup-truck load of top soil to spread around the 'new' walk and get some grass started. While we had been working on the sidewalk, Janice had been preparing a new bed at the front for shrubs which will be planted this fall when the damp weather encourages transplanting. Finishing this bed was a real victory because she had first uprooted all sorts of difficult weeds, then turned the sod over, leveled the bed and dressed it with top soil. Steve laid some gravel and paving stones for easy access to the outside faucet.

While the others were shopping for various things, I decided to see whether Janice's suspicion was correct. When she had been working at the back of the house, she wondered whether she had discovered bits of a sidewalk parallel to the back of the house. Curious, I started digging, pulling heavy sod away, and yes, there was indeed an old cement sidewalk which was totally covered by grass, weeds, stones, broken glass, etc. for years. The walkway was in remarkably good shape, and best of all, it did not need to be moved or leveled.