Front Landscape Makeover

 Remember me?  The one who rarely manages to post new things on their blog?  I'm Back!
This summer has been busy around the Dunn house, and it was all exterior updates.  The most recent was stone and more stones done in two phases.

The stone side walk you see above is actually the final step in last months landscape makeover, but its the part we did ourselves, so I'll start here and work backwards.   
Our front yard has always had two problems.  1. it won't grow grass over the majority of it... or even weeds!  We reseed and over seed every spr;ing and by summer it's all dead.   And 2. we have a long stone sidewalk that cuts down the center of the yard and ends down at the end of our driveway near the street.  When guests pull up into our driveway, they literally have to walk back down the driveway to get to the sidewalk.  Why on earth it was done this way, who knows... but it's annoying.  The photo below shows just a small portion of the sidewalk that needed moved. 

So we moved it!  We dug up EVERY DAG GONE STONE and carried them up the hill to create a new jigsaw puzzle of a sidewalk!  It was like putting together a puzzle that actually has no pieces that fit together! haha!  

Now that we're in our mid 50s  we work in small bursts, work a few hours, rub on the icy hot.  Work a few more hours, moan and whine and quit for the day.  So obviously this took us about a week to get laid out.   First we spray painted our planned path for new stone steps (thankfully we DIDN'T do those). Next was digging out the pathway approx 4" deep, then pouring in a sand base to help with leveling the stones. 

The above right photo was when we hit the halfway mark, which is about 5 days worth of icy hot and heating pads worth.

We reached the landing and damn that felt good!  Lastly we filled in between the stones with another sand mix and wet it all down.  With each rain we've had this week it's packed much nicer and the dogs love it too!

What Came Before The Sidewalk.....

Remember I mentioned a yard that won't grow grass?  We gave up and had stone brought in along with large stones for the steps.  Take a look at these before and afters!

Next week new top soil is arriving for a large portion of the yard, and then reseeded.  I think we've finally got a handle on the barren curb appeal!   Next post I'll be sharing about building our own arbors above the garage doors.  A very simple DIY!