New Front Patio - A Tune Up for the Back Yard Courtyard Project, AKAThe Big Dig

Inside the fenced portion of our front yard we've had some luck (finally) getting my old "grass couch" looking better with some annuals, but the rest of the ground inside the fence has been awful - just a place for the dog to play ball. The ground is sloped so we couldn't have a decent place to sit. I've been wanting to do something to it for a while, and finally I made some decisions and went to work!

My idea was to dig out a level area for something like a kidney shaped slate patio with a small retaining wall.

Here's the area after most of my digging was done - I'm estimating I dug and moved about 2 to 3 tons of dirt.

Next I stapled down some landscape cloth to block out weeds, and then I spread about 1500 pounds of gravel to level out the surface, and tamped it down.

At that point I started moving these this pieces of slate I've been saving for years. They formed a patio at our old house, and I had torn that apart before we moved here. Since the old house was only a mile away I brought the slate pieces with me. They averaged about two inches in thickness, much sturdier than what you see for sale these days. Yes, I'm crazy.

Here I was putting the puzzle together and doing my best to keep things leveled.  I was able to get by without doing much cutting of the stones I had.

From past experience, I knew that weeds can sprout up from the joints if you use sand or something loose, so I chose to fill the joints with concrete.

Not the prettiest at this point.

I bought some stacking stones for the wall and cemented those in place.

Now that the concrete is nearly cured, I plan to clean it with some muriatic acid.

The metal mesh chairs and love seat I painted yellow last year never looked right so I gave ten a fresh coat of Rustoleum Apple Red. I like this color much better and it matches the red accents in our front entry.

Here's the way it looks as of now:

SWMBO will be planting along the wall to add some color, and we plan to add some more plants later on this fall. 

I love the result of this project.  It took me about 30-40 hours of work spread out over two weeks, and now we finally have a level place to sit and less grass to cut!  Plus, I'm motivated to get back on the back courtyard project which has been languishing for way too long.

Another Estate Sale Find - Bertoia-style Homecrest Outdoor Chairs

I had Friday off with plans to drive up to Pennsylvania for the weekend and visit with some college buddies, but before I left home I had a little time and visited a local estate sale.  I picked up a couple of things, including these great chairs and table for a great price!

I'm no expert on designers - do any of you have a guess at who made these?  The yellow covers on the two chairs are like new.

I'm hoping the green covers will clean up better, but they are faded.  It would be great to know if you can still buy this kind of outdoor cover.

The chairs with the green covers are different from each other and different from the chairs with the yellow covers, but all four are in nice shape.  These will be perfect for our courtyard when I get that built.

Working on the Big Dig

I'm taking the week off to focus on building the forms for the concrete footers for the back patio wall.  So far I am about 60 percent there.

This may look simple and straightforward, but these forms need to be straight and square and level - and getting them that way is hard work!  I'm using 2x8 lumber for the framing, and none of it is perfectly straight.  I'll be satisfied if I can get it all level and straight.  Tomorrow I hope to have the forms done, but I'm complicating things by planning to step up 8 inches to allow for a change in grade, and that's going to take some extra effort.

Building a Patio Wall, and I'm Stumped

A couple years ago, I dug a hole I haven't gotten out of yet.  It all started when I went to a party hosted by a friend I used to work with.  She lives in DC on Capitol Hill.  Has an old townhouse with a great walled courtyard out back.  It's really all her fault.  I figured I could build a nice L-shaped brick wall out back and create a nice courtyard for us to enjoy.  So I started hand digging footers for a foundation.  SWMBO calls it the big dig (and not affectionately).

Well, I finally finished the digging, and this Spring I moved about six tons of gravel to use to level out the bottom.  I have the lumber and rebar, now I just need to frame up the footers in order to pour cement.  But these 90-plus-degree days have made it awful to work outside this summer.

Meanwhile the area I'm working in is overgrown with weeds.  It's slow going even with a weedeater.  So I've been gradually trying to kill the weeds by leaving them covered with tarps.  It's not a pretty picture out back, but I can envision what it will look like when done. Now I'm aiming to build the footer forms in early September.

I'm still torn between building a brick wall, or holding out for some period-correct screen blocks to use for the wall.

The problem with screen blocks is, they don't seem to be available any more, at least nowhere here in the Washington, DC area.  And shipping a big supply of decorative concrete blocks from California or Florida might just be a little pricey.  I may end up finishing the footers and putting up a wood fence, at least until I can find some of these screen blocks. (There's a great list over at Retrorenovation - but unfortunately, I have found nothing close to me.  I plan to try Lowes locally and see if I can persuade them to stock something.)

There's another project waiting for attention in the area of the future atomic patio.  We had a humongous tulip poplar tree cut down because it was old, too close to the house and dropping huge limbs a random moments. The tree guys had to bring in a crane to get at it.  They did a good job and even left me a tall stump.

Can you guess what I want to do with this stump?