The Roby Family

The front of our house continues its metamorphosis. From day one we’ve been eager to rip out all of the old landscaping and begin anew. Most of the old landscaping has been removed for several months. Since its removal we’ve been debating what type of edging to use for the new landscaping.

We were confident we wanted more than a basic metal or composite edging:

We used this at our first house and we felt something with more heft was the appropriate choice.

We moved on to considering a pre-cast concrete block for the an edge in areas and a near retaining wall in others:

With the slope of our yard this presented some neat opportunities but also a great installation challenge. We were gifted about 20% of the block we would need for the project, but in the end we felt this would be too much work.

After much debate and driving around peaking at people’s yards we decided to use weathered limestone boulders to edge our front landscape beds. The entire project isn’t done so we’ll save pictures of the entire edge for later. However, here are a few pictures of our larger and/or more interesting rocks:

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We roughed out the beds with the gifted (thanks Whites!) blocks to give us an idea of the shape we wanted. That was great except when it came to removing them. That was just the beginning of our heavy lifting. Here are the weight totals of all the work we did this weekend:

2,400 lbs – Concrete block removal

2,400 lbs – Loading and unloading 30 bags of top-soil for shaping

460 lbs – Loading more limestone boulders at stone yard because the 3,830 lbs they delivered wasn’t enough

4,290 lbs – Installing limestone boulders

9,550 lbs – total lifting, hauling, rolling, grunting done this weekend

In case you are math challenged like me Google says that is 4.775 tons of material! Josh moved the mass majority of the weight. One of our neighbors helped him move the largest stone, which clocked in at about 500 lbs. The rest was Josh showing off his new found “old man strength.”

Now that the edging is done we will prep the bed and be ready for planting this fall!

It took us a little longer than expected but we finally have a new roof!  Our old roof was nearly 50 years old but was in great working condition.  However, it wasn’t the prettiest thing in the world and our insurance company was gigging us pretty good due to its age.  You can see pictures of the old roof at Christmas time by clicking here.

We wanted to go with a darker color with some variations.  We chose “Black Walnut” by TAMKO.

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It is hard to capture the different colors that are in the shingles so you’ll have to come visit to see it in person.

It took a little more work than anticipated but the awnings are down.  It’s not a full blown face lift but more like a brow lift.  I love the look of it and so happy to be able to have clear sight lines out of the house.  The living, dining and guest rooms are much brighter!

Before picture:

After pictures:

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As an aside, one of the great things about living in an emerging neighborhood is that stuff you put on the curb doesn’t last long.  With two awnings down and Josh working on the third a family showed up asking if they could have them.  Before they could return with their truck another gentleman asked for them.

The first floor windows on the front of our home are “decorated” with metal awnings.  Since the day we saw the house we’ve wanted to rip them off.  Well, the day has arrived!  The awnings go down today!

If all goes well we’ll have a follow up post showing the difference later this weekend.