Thursday, October 25, 2012

31 {More} Days of Pinterest: Day 11 Rocking the Side of the House

Yep. Rocking...as in putting down rocks. Also, rocking from the soreness the next day.

We've had a pile of decorative rock hanging out by our driveway for, oh, years. A few of them. Like 3. Enough so that it all is mostly invisible to me simply because it's always been there.

Sadly, I don't have a picture of it.

I do, however have some pictures of where we put the rock. Only the beginning and the end, mind, mostly because the camera battery ran out of juice midway through and had to be recharged.

I was looking for low-maintenance outside projects on Pinterest, and came across a few pictures that had rock patios. It got me thinking that hey, we already HAVE rocks, and a place that was in need of help.

No, it really needed help.

Here's a couple of before shots. Well, not exactly true befores because I'd already started pulling weeds and vines. Close enough.


Nice, huh?


Really classy. And oh, so welcoming. Sure, it's the back door, but that's the door that everyone uses around here.


We started by pretty much clearing it out. It already looked 5000% better. Steve tried to till it so that we could level it out, but the ground was way too hard.



So we watered it for a few days, then after a couple of mini-rainstorms, we came back to it. The camera was charging at this point, and I wasn't about to waste the beautiful day waiting for it, so there's no more pictures until the end.

We took some shovels and turned the dirt to give the tiller something to bite into, and picked out some larger rocks that had worked their way up.

Once it was tilled, we took rakes and leveled it out. Then we laid permeable landscape fabric down, making sure to overlap the layers between the rows. We used the landscape fabric because it allows water to drain--this is important because this is on the Northwest corner of the house, which gets snow, but not a whole lot of sunshine.

Then it was time to lay the rocks. Oh, my. We started by anchoring the overlapping fabric by putting rocks down on top, then on the corners. I found that using a rake to level it was slower than just using my foot, so that's what I did. It'll still settle over the winter, but that's ok. We have plenty more rock if needed.

Here's where we ended:




We're using the board as a temporary-over-the-winter edge. I think we may turn the corner of the house & rock all the way down the north side, especially since it gets hardly any sun, and it's all weedy and not particularly attractive right now.

To see my other 31 {More}Days of Pinterest projects, click on the image below, and it will take you to my original post.










No comments: