We thought we were just replacing some sandstone in our front yard. Little did we know, our new patio would add an entirely new room to our house.
Our cramped and rickety old patio had never been usable. An oversized planting bed took up valuable space. The flagstones had been sinking and shifting since we moved into our house 42 years ago — a safety hazard and an eyesore. The old Arizona sandstone was discolored by black mold in the shade and an ice cream spill by the front door.
Connecticut Blue Stone
But now the patio has been redone with beautiful Connecticut blue stone (the true blue type) set on a sturdy concrete base. A too-shady planting bed has been eliminated, and the patio is now big enough and smooth enough for a no-wobble dining set.
Thanks (thanks?) to the pandemic, we’ll probably be doing all of our entertaining outdoors well into 2021. And now we have two very different places to seat our guests:
- At the back of the house — our brand-new deck with its nifty view of trees and a scrap of the San Francisco Bay. Unfortunately, the deck can be too hot on a summer day and too cool in the evening if there’s a breeze coming in off the bay.
- At the front of the house our spacious new patio — shady on a hot day, and sheltered from the wind on a chilly evening.
There’s lots still do do in that front yard of ours. We have added a set of mini stairs to make it easy to enter the garden from the patio. Which means our winding garden path will have to be rerouted.
Also, we’d like to tweak our irrigation system — the old one shoots water onto our fence, staining it.
But Where to Get a New Dining Set?
With, not one, but two outdoor entertaining areas, we’ll need a second dining set.
But where do we shop for that? Our local nursery has stopped selling patio furniture. Suggestions please!
See the before patio pictures at “We’re Putting Our Shabby Old Patio Out of Its Misery.” See the patio under construction at “Watching People Work With Their Hands. Why Am I So Fascinated?” Another story from this garden at “I Want to Kill My Snapdragons.”
Your patio turned out beautifully, and I’d be so excited to plan some plants and furniture! How about using a color scheme to bring out the blues of the stone? Ballards has online ordering of many patterns and colors of Sunbrella fabric for seat cushions. There are a ton of sweet small plants in shades of blue.
OK. Sunbrella fabric for seat cushions. That helps. And I love the blue-purple flowers, columbines, forget-me-nots, lobelia . . . . and maybe some orange blossoms to set off the blues.
Love the orange accents idea. Some white always looks clean with blues. What fun!
OK. White. I’ll remember that. I think we need to get a designer in to redo the basic layout of the garden and suggest some shrubs to give the garden some structure. I’d like to grow some flowers that I can cut and bring into the house. But I have to be careful not to create more work/responsibility than I can actually manage. The garden, like a lot of things in my life, cries out for me to spend time with it and enjoy it. But I keep over committing to cool stuff I want to do, and wind up overextended.
Look on NextDoor and craigslist. Plenty of nice outdoor furniture shows up there
Love your new patio for outdoor Covid dining & gatherings! Will & Katherine
Thank you, Will and Katerine. Not exactly the stern of a nice riverboat, with the whole world going by. But we do have hummingbirds, yellow jackets and Japanese anemones to ponder without ever leaving home.
Love the blue stone & redesign. In our home (St Pete FL) We had professionals remove and grind a huge unwanted high maintenance bamboo grove in the back of one side of our house. Had a second patio put in with gazebo which we lighted. With some landscaping it’s a little oasis. Yes we agree. As bad as Covid is, there are some good things coming out of it. Virginia
Yes. We are creating new places to visit right close by. I’ll bet getting rid of the unwanted bamboo grove was very satisfying. We took out a dilapidated mail box post that had been an eyesore for years and replaced it with a simple black post. What a relief!
LL Bean on Line.
Thanks for the ourdoor furniture shopping suggestions Nancy and Linda. I miss the in-person shopping I used to do. It was a way of going exploring, seeing what’s out there, interacting with people a little, getting new ideas, and being able to try on the shoes and sit in the patio chair. But on-line is turning out to be fun in its own way.