Yep literally a ton of flag stone has been placed in my back yard, by my trusty contractor, ME! Talk about a ton o' something! As you can see from my face I am quite happy about being finished. It has been three straight weekends of back breaking labor, but I think the result was worth all the effort. I have to give a BIG thank you to my husband Steven for moving all the rock to the back yard, hauling sand and gravel here and there and for basically putting up with all my bossing! Believe me he tried to take a shot at laying flag, but gladly gave the reins back to me. So with my creative juices on high this is how it unfolded. Enjoy!
After excavating the area we spread the gravel.
Here is the full gravel layer. Now for weed barrier and sand.
Let the creativity begin! Here I am laying the flag and trying not to mess anything up. Basically I can put together a 400 SF puzzle with out a picture! Ha Ha Ha!
If you saw my back yard before you know what a waste land it was, if not I will throw in a few pictures to show you!
Here is a shot of the back yard before Idaho power downed the two trees in the corner, killing everything in the yard! Ugh! They were awful trees though. I don't recommend Locusts at all!
Here is the waste land that it was before we started the patio. You can even see a pile of flag stone that we started collecting last year. I am taking a load of hand split wood to the front of the house.
Drum roll please....here is the after! We still have to fill in the cracks with soil and plant our Scottish moss, but the hard part of this project is behind us!
Can you believe it is the same yard? I can't! Now on to planting, staining the fence, and so on.
Look Steven already got started after getting some advice from Bailey of course!
We are missing the snow! Here is the house all covered in a blanket of white. We were missing a Christmas tree to really set the mood. So this is our fourth year of going to the same lot. It's all about candy canes and Christmas trees!
We have a winner!
Lights, Camera, Action!
Thad played a little song for us after our decorating extravaganza. He loves playing the piano. He totally has the musician bug just like Daddy.
Many of you may know that I hate carpet. Really! It collects so much dirt and hides it and you only find it when you go to replace it or remove it. So it was a glorious day for me when I came home one late summer day to find Steven ripping up the carpet in the living room! Of course that prompted us to rip it out in the front bedroom(our altar room) and in the kids room! The best part is we have hardwood everywhere! I am so excited. We should have enough money by February to refinish all the floors. Some of the base boards were raised to put in the carpet before we owned the house so we will have to put new one's in. That should be an adventure trying to match it to the existing moldings! So with out further adieu I present the before and middle pictures. I'll post afters once we have the floors refinished in February!
We did some traveling as well as some camping. One of the neatest things is we purchased was a camper. It came in handy on our trip to Utah and not having to pay for a hotel. Here are a few shots from some of our trips.
Now we have put the garden to bed and are finishing up the Soccer season! We're very excited that Fall is here!
So Ashton has mastered his bike. Yes Sir! No more training wheels for him! He is so excited! Here is a short video I took the day he got it. It only took him a few hours to figure it out once Dad took off the training wheels. You can see how excited he is. Way to go Ashton!
Yep literally a ton of flag stone has been placed in my back yard, by my trusty contractor, ME! Talk about a ton o' something! As you can see from my face I am quite happy about being finished. It has been three straight weekends of back breaking labor, but I think the result was worth all the effort. I have to give a BIG thank you to my husband Steven for moving all the rock to the back yard, hauling sand and gravel here and there and for basically putting up with all my bossing! Believe me he tried to take a shot at laying flag, but gladly gave the reins back to me. So with my creative juices on high this is how it unfolded. Enjoy!
Here is the full gravel layer. Now for weed barrier and sand.
Let the creativity begin! Here I am laying the flag and trying not to mess anything up. Basically I can put together a 400 SF puzzle with out a picture! Ha Ha Ha!
If you saw my back yard before you know what a waste land it was, if not I will throw in a few pictures to show you!
Here is the waste land that it was before we started the patio. You can even see a pile of flag stone that we started collecting last year. I am taking a load of hand split wood to the front of the house.
Drum roll please....here is the after! We still have to fill in the cracks with soil and plant our Scottish moss, but the hard part of this project is behind us!
Can you believe it is the same yard? I can't! Now on to planting, staining the fence, and so on.
