Sunday, March 8, 2009

Patio and Cold Frame Project

The weekend project at my house has been preparing an area for a new patio walkway, and cold frame setup. We collected a bunch of pavers and bricks from someone on Craigslist, and now have very cool building materials to work with. 

First up is a patio extension to help keep our dog's feet dry when spring comes to Colorado and hopefully gives us some rain.

This area is part of the house's south facing courtyard, a big square of grass we laid down for the dogs and fenced. Since most of the area around the house is still dirt because of our house construction, we had to have a grass enclosed pen to contain the dogs on wet days. The finishing touch will be this patio at the entry way.

There was not enough of any one material to finish the project, so we had to get creative and make a pattern with the supplies on hand. The edges got larger blocks, and the center walkway is made of bricks.

The patio faces south, so it should stay nice and warm, plus melt any snow we might be lucky enough to get. 

Our soil is already sandy, so we didn't have to haul in any additional dirt to lay the bricks. We did brush a bunch of sand over the top to help though. I think the dogs will really enjoy sitting on this patio !!

There it is ! A great walkway that will help keep all our feet dry !!

Next in this project is to use some larger stacking blocks to build a cold frame box or two next to the patio. We get so much sun that it will be easy to grow some greens all year long, if only they have some protection. When this project gets going, I'll post some pictures of the cold frame boxes.

1 comment:

Doris Sturm said...

Wow! I'm impressed. I didn't know you knew so much about building. It must be very rewarding to improve your own home with your own two hands. Keep up the good work!

Thanks for sharing!