Walkway

You just have to love home improvement. You make one thing better (deck) only to realize that you now need to do something else that you didn't see before (walkway). So now that the deck has a set of stairs that faces the driveway and we're coming and going that way much more often (at least in the summer months), a proper walkway was only a matter of time.

You've seen the deck before and deck after pics in the previous post (scroll down), so we'll just stick to the walkway here. We ordered pavers, gravel, sand, and more sand, which was delivered before the long end of summer weekend. Oh, in addition to the walkway, we also bought some stones (and a couple plants) to dress up the area between the walkway and the house. I'm very proud of this project, I think it looks better in person than the pics show. Here goes:

This one really shows the area in question that we're working on:

And once the materials showed, it was time to dig.


And dig. And fill, and tamp...


and level and tamp. And fill, and level and screed. Then place pavers. Then cut pavers. Then sweep sand on the pavers, hoping it fills the cracks (for the most part, it did).

And finish the edge pattern before tropical storm Hanna. Post-Hanna, prep and landscape the area inside of the walkway. Phew! Looks very good. Barkley loves it!

Deck expansion

Another project that we didn't do!

The deck in the back yard was all pressure treated lumber, 12 feet deep, 14 feet wide. This was fine for a smaller table but a standard 3 foot x 5 foot table with chairs just about took up the whole thing. You can squeeze 6 in one of those tables, but its a little tight, and if we're grilling and chilling outside, I'd rather not be on top of everyone. So we were thinking of 2 things - getting a bigger outdoor table and expanding the deck to accommodate it. Here is the deck v1.0:

So the original deck only had 1 set of stairs, heading out to the back yard. As the new deck is going along the house, we're going to be much closer to the driveway. A second set of stairs was installed to make it easy to get in the house via the back door. Here's a mid-process and an 'after' pic. We're lovin' it (and so is a very young Barkley)!

Spring cleaning

Alright, so summer is technically almost over. But there were some projects that were done here at G'mas house that we were a little late in posting. In the month of May we did two things...actually we didn't really do them. For a welcome change we paid someone real money to do home improvement projects. In both cases work was done that we would be ill equipped to fulfill, and we're delighted with the results:

Kitchen Backsplash:
Here is a quick refresher. Before:


Whoops! Okay, that was before in the extreme...ahh the good ole days!

Now here is what our kitchen looked like pre and post backsplash:


Tiles look great. Oh, and under cabinet halogen lighting was installed as well. I still have some trim to install so you won't be able to see the lights, but who's counting!

Tree Trimming
We (or more correctly, our neighbors) have a huge old oak tree in our backyard. While it does help give our house a more woodsy feel in the city, it nearly closes off all direct sunlight in the back yard. And the branches were getting so huge that before the end of the summer I'm pretty sure some branches would actually touch our house. So a friend of ours knows a tree guy, and next thing you know, they're here with all the heavy equipment. And in like 2 hours, Poof! all gone. Limbs cut, chipped and hauled out. Here is the big boy in all its pre-op glory:

Bucket operator making short work of some big limbs:
Carnage:
Post-Op tree:

The difference was immediate, and all we hoped. We get more sun in the back yard, so that means the house is a bit more bright. It also means that we don't have to limit our plant selections to the shade loving section. Next summer, I'm hoping to build a couple of raised beds to grow my own. That would have been pretty disappointing if my tomatoes/beans/etc only got 1 hr (or less) of direct sun a day. We'll see next summer!