New Front Patio: Day 1

Here's a picture of the front of the house during the morning hours when the landscape crew started pulling out dead plants and a small magnolia tree.

They broke up the stone edging and moved all the irrigation out of the area, getting ready to put in a patio.

Luckily, some of the green plants are living through this drought. I'm planning on leaving just the evergreen-type plants in and losing anything that flowers.

The temperature has hit above 100 degrees for 40 days now down here in Texas, without any rain in the forecast. In fact, the weather channel showed "0" percent chance of rain in the area the last several days!

So, in the middle of this drought and extreme heat wave, we developed a water leak in the irrigation system (that's what they call sprinkler systems in Texas) and found we had standing water in the front of the house in a low area.

The resolution is to fill the area with concrete and flagstone, thus avoiding the water draining in the area. We're pulling out all the irrigation and creating a patio that will slope away from the house and run into the grass. Once we get the right side of the entryway done, stage 2 will be the left side, and stage 3 will be to remove the ugly straight walkway and continue the flagstone out to the street with a winding curvy, cottage-style walkway.

Come back soon, and see the finish to this project...or maybe I'll post pictures of the landscaping guys as the pass out from heat stroke. Either way, I'll be sure to get a picture.