October 25, 2010

New Paver Walkway: Day 1

My neighborhood is a bit of a snooze when it comes to curb appeal.  There are only a few different house models in the development, so all of the homes look pretty much alike.  To make matters worse, we have a home owners association that makes sure the houses look uniform and everyone follows set standards like have green doors and shutters and beige garages.  So in order to spruce up our curb appeal, our only method of personalization is by updating our landscaping.  


Although our existing landscaping isn't terrible, it's not exciting either.  We have basic green bushes that were put in by the builder and can be found on many other homes in the neighborhood.  But what really bothers us is the narrow walkway from the driveway to the front door.  The walkway is very narrow and if our car is parked in the driveway it makes putting out the trash our carrying groceries into the house a bit of a hassle.


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After this year's hot summer two of our green bushes died and need to be removed.  Rob took out the dead bushes last week and we decided that this weekend was the perfect opportunity to improve our landscaping and put in a wider walkway (in fact this was one of our goals from the start of the year)!  The plan is to remove the rest of the boring bushes, put down a paver stones to widen the walkway, and plant prettier shrubs and flowers.


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We decided to use paver stones that look similar to the pavers used on the dividing path between our garage and our neighbor's:


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Our weekend began with a trip to Home Depot on Saturday to pick out our pavers.  We chose these Pavestone concrete pavers in two sizes (smaller and bigger).  Along with the pavers, we picked up about 15 bags of sand and 17 bags of rocks.


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The rest of the day was spent ripping out another bush and digging out a hole where our pathway will go.


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That's as far as we got on Saturday before it got too dark to work.  Up next is ripping out some more bushes and preparing the walkway for the pavers.  Stay tuned for an update on day two of work!

2 comments:

ChRiS said...

oh i hope you got a ok to do this i have friends in same type of housing development did some changes like you and they had to tear it allllllllll up!!!! i mean 100's of dollars up in smoke.

Jenny @ DIY Newlyweds said...

Chris, good point! Yep we had to get approval from our home owner's association before beginning any work. As long as we run it by them, and we don't go outside of any of the guidelines they've set (like the home colors I mentioned), it hopefully won't be an issue.