Springing Up the Front Porch

Well, this is more spring and summer (if I can remember to stay on top of watering and the plants don't die).

If you recall, last year I put out a few potted plants on the front porch.  I went cheap and got 2 plastic pots from Home Depot, drilled holes and put a bright pink geranium in each one. They were bright & colorful, but too small to be the star of the show on the porch.

This year, I needed to go a bit bigger.  I had spotted these pots at Ikea:

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And I truly fell in love with that blue color.  Last year's pots were yellow and I really love a blue & yellow color combo, so I picked up 2 of these bad-boys.  They were pretty big without being ENORMOUS.  And at $15/each the price was right.

Planting up the big pots was pretty simple.  I drilled a few holes in the bottom of each pot to allow for drainage of excess water.  Then I put a brick in each one (to prevent tip-over).  A bit of potting soil and then a few flowering and green plants and it was done!

Here's how they looked:

I made matching planters for each side of the porch.  Here's the look from the yard:

I'm starting another bigger curb appeal project, so I'm holding off on any from-the-sidewalk photos until that's more done.

What kinds of outdoor spring spruce-ups do you have going on??

Building a Mini-Patio and a Surprise

Way back in the spring I hatched a plan to solve a little problem in our yard.  We have our hose on a reel by the back porch and whenever the hose was used, we'd end up with a mud puddle right next to the house.  The problem got worse during the summers when we'd also get a ton of nasty weeds along with the mud.  Early this summer I had the idea to build a little mini-patio right by the hose for the reel to hang out on.  It would eliminate the weeds and the puddle.  Unfortunately, due to my own procrastination, the project remained undone.  Until last weekend!

I started out by raking out all the weeds that were in the area I wanted to work on.  It was actually pretty easy since the ground is always so wet there.  Using the rake, I tried to even out the ground as best I could and tamped it down a bit.  There was a low spot I filled in with a bit of sandbox sand.

Then I cut a piece of landscape fabric about the size I needed and tacked it down with the included stakes.

For pavers/bricks, I just used some we had on hand.  Oddly enough we had a bunch of bricks buried in the back yard.

And this is where the surprise comes in: I had thought that there was maybe a little step-out from the garage and a few beds that were bordered by bricks, but as I started pulling up the bricks, I found that there was a whole patio - probably 4 x 6 feet.

I completely uncovered it and hosed it off.  It's not very pretty or in good shape (there's a definite wave to it), but I figure, better to have it out in the open than having weeds growing over it.  

Back to the new patio - I grabbed a few bricks from the edges of the "hidden" patio to create the new one. I used the hose to rinse off any dirt and moss.  And using a basket weave pattern, I laid out a square.

Now once I had all the bricks, it only took about 15 minutes to lay it all out.  I tried to level/even out the bricks once they were in place.  And after I had things set, I used a few red bricks to make sort of a border.  Then I trimmed back excess landscape fabric and I was DONE!

A few things to note:  This is not the right way to build a patio.  Nope, the right way involves a lot more digging, tamping, creating a solid foundation with crushed stone/gravel before you lay any pavers.  This little area doesn't have to stand the test of time (we have plans for this area, maybe), so I was just hoping to reduce the mud puddles we deal with on a regular basis.

So that's it!

What do you think?