So even before school ended we had started on a big summer project that we thought would have been finished by now and honestly its still not even in the beginning phase. We wanted to get our landscaping done and have a patio and new sidewalk installed. We had actually gotten several quotes for both landscaping and hardscaping before the end of June....but in the end we decided that accomplishing both this year was going to be a little much so we decided to just focus on the hardscaping this year and hopefully do the landscaping next year. We decided to go with a landscaper we had used in our previous house to install both landscaping and a patio and sidewalk. He does FANTASTIC work and we LOVE working with him. Anyways his schedule was quite full so it hasn't been until now that he can begin working on our project. He is coming by again this week to finalize plans and I'm starting to second guess our original ideas.....this is where I need all of your help.
The patio is a definite in terms of the plans......I love what we have come up with but the sidewalk believe it or not is causing me great frustration and indecisiveness. Originally I was just going to have a regular paver sidewalk installed. However, one day as my mom and I sat outside in the grass in patio furniture watching the kids ride their bikes she mentioned it would be nice if there was a sitting area out front....hmmmm.......it had crossed my mind but I wasn't sure how to implement something like that without it looking odd. We always said our next house would have a front porch and then when we built this house we decided to forego the porch elevation....now I'm wishing I had that porch......live and learn I guess. SO I turned to pintrest (of course) for some inspiration. This is what I came up with:
I LOVE THIS!!! I thought it would be the perfect solution to our front yard sitting area issue and it wouldn't look out of place. We would just have a rounded wide area prior to the stoop attached to the sidewalk and then we can put a couple of chairs to the side to sit and enjoy our neighborhood from.
WELL, then I started seeing other ideas like these:
These pintrest postings all had the sitting area off to the side of the sidewalk in their own little private space but still in the front of the home.....And not that I specifically LOVED any one of these but they got me to thinking. SO we happened to be driving through the neighborhood one day recently and one of our neighbors just did a beautiful job on their landscaping and of course don't I see they also have a sitting area off to the side of their sidewalk in front of their house but surrounded by landscaping so you could hardly tell it is there....BEAUTIFUL!!! So now I'm debating....big round area in front of the stoop or sitting area off to the side. Now you would think thats the end of the debate....BUT you are mistaken....it goes beyond that (I know I make everyone crazy with my "what if" and "I was thinking scenarios".....thats why I need all of you to help me)......
Here are the additional dilemmas:
If I went with the giant circle in front of the stoop...technically I could only put the chairs on the right side of the circle faxing west or one on each side of the stoop which wouldn't be good if holding a conversation with someone (see diagram below...the x is chair spots and the O is a small table) otherwise you would have to walk through them to get to our front door....in addition it would be weird just being able to really look one way down the street rather than have a view of the entire neighborhood....my back would be facing the entrance to our street and I would basically be looking towards the dead end section of our street (well I guess I could turn the chairs around but if my kids were riding bikes I wouldn't have full view of the street either way).....so I'm not sure this is the best use of this space nor the most comfortable BUT it would look nice with our landscape plans and the center entrance appeal of our house I think.....and if we decided not use the sitting area it wouldn't look awkward.
(PS I hate posting things from other websites so my disclaimer is they are not my ideas or my photos and were taken from pintrest from the sites listed on the picture itself or from other pinners.....and sorry for the long blog post again!!)
