patio

What Started as a Fairly Simple Project…

June 15, 2013
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…has turned into my PERGOLA! As you may remember, last fall we removed the last of our Smooth Sumac trees next to our flagstone patio because they were too invasive and sent underground suckers all over our (and our neighbor’s) yard. We are still digging up roots that are trying to grow new sumac trees [...]

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Box o’ Prairie Grasses

August 22, 2012
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Our cedar raised planter box is working out well in defining our pea gravel patio. The prairie grasses I transplanted are supposed to grow at least 5-feet tall but I think they were a little stunted this year due to the transplantation and maybe the drought. I really didn’t water them but they grew nevertheless [...]

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Hardscaping the Yard, Part 2

June 2, 2012
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Once the dirt digging was done we were ready for our hardscaping materials. After shopping around for red pavers, I knew I didn’t want the more generic concrete pavers, like Unilock. It just wouldn’t look right with our natural flagstone and our old bungalow: too new-looking and too uniform. Of course concrete pavers are cheaper [...]

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Hardscaping the Yard, Part 1

June 2, 2012
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To make good on my goals for 2012, back in late March/early April I started calling various concrete contractors to get quotes on removing the sidewalk that stretched the length of the house to our alley. It was the first step in transforming our yard according to the plan that our landscape designer created for [...]

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Luck of the Draw

August 6, 2008

As you may have heard by now, we were one of the lucky winners in the Houseblogs.net “Look What I Did” sweepstakes sponsored by True Value. Before you look at our entry and think, “What?! They won for THAT??“, this was not a contest based on aesthetics or project difficulty or anything else, other than [...]

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Look What We Did: Patio and Yard

July 21, 2008
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As part of the Houseblogs.net “Look What I Did” Sweepstakes, it’s a perfect time to show the Before-and-After of our flagstone patio and the progress we’ve made on our yard to date. (I’m also happy for the chance to win some cold hard cash/plastic from our sponsor, True Value!) When we moved into our bungalow, [...]

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Garden Spaces

May 28, 2008
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As you’ve probably read or heard, when planning outdoor spaces it’s nice to incorporate different “rooms” depending on how you want to use them. While the bulk of our outdoor entertaining will be centered around the patio, it’s also out in the open for everyone to see (until our shrubs grow big enough) and it [...]

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Memorable Memorial Day Weekend

May 27, 2008
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While we still spent a good portion of the weekend working in the yard, we also spent a lot of time relaxing on our patio. The finishing touches are complete — check it out! Here’s the view walking from the front of the house along the sidewalk to our side yard (the house is directly [...]

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Drinks on the Patio, SOON!

May 20, 2008
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I can hardly believe it, but for all intents and purposes, we are finished with our patio with plenty of time to spare before our Memorial Day deadline! Over the weekend we still had plenty left to do. The first day was spent leveling every single stone. First we tried to mark the pitch with [...]

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Dry Fit

May 16, 2008
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We have all of the major pieces of flagstone in place, and we just barely had enough stone. We still have a number of smaller pieces (shown strewn about on top of the big pieces) which we’ll have to chisel down to fit into the smaller holes, but for the most part I think we [...]

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