told2b
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Re: landscape consultation

New steps copy2.jpg
...

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rainbowgardener
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beautiful! I love all the "plantings"! Hope mine looks something like that, some day.

thanrose
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I like the darker garage doors. Generally I think garages and driveways and cars are a necessary eyesore on a house and garden. Painting them darker mitigates that.

I like the blue shutters and taupe ex. walls. Dark red fades more quickly than any other paint I've seen. Also, blue on the door would be more visible than the dark red if you continue to use a screen door or glass storm door.

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rainbowgardener
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Yay!! A vote for blue! :D

Yes, I quite like the darker garage doors and will do that, no matter what color we paint the door and shutters (the shutters are still only hypothetical/ virtual). I also think in this case making the garage doors match the wood on the other side (below the barn roof), will add some balance to our entirely asymmetrical house.

told2b
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Taupe R copy2.jpg

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rainbowgardener
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Very nice! One of my off-line friends just suggested slate color ....

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rainbowgardener
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OK gardener friends. Help me think again.... Still just working on laying out pavers. Eventually it will be two of the 16x16" pavers wide with a row of the small multi colored bricks as edging down each side. As currently constituted, it comes basically straight out from the driveway much of the time and then curves around to the steps. My question is would it be more esthetic to keep the curve from the steps going more, so the path would be closer to a semi-circle and end up meeting the driveway a little closer to the house? (Following the curve of the plantings more... though the plantings can be added to/ re-arranged in the spring) The pavers aren't set in at all right now, while we figure out how we want them.

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(let me know if there's any trouble seeing the photos. I just copied the image address straight from Facebook, without downloading them to my computer first. I don't know if that will be a problem for people who don't use FB. )

thanrose
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My thinking on this is that the full arc or quarter circle is a little more likely to be obeyed by delivery and visitors, whereas the smaller radius arc only at the right angle will sometimes be cut short, trampling stuff in your bed.

But, the full arc could leave you with an acute angle if you adhere to the geometry. So a bit of a straight path coming onto the lawn from the drive, then a more gradual arc (longer radius) to the base of the steps.

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rainbowgardener
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so.... spent the past four days painting our house. Not done yet, but mostly.

Here's what the house originally looked like:
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here's what the front looks like now:
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trim around the door and the stair treads are yet to be painted. Still to come: put shutters on the upper windows on right, paint door to match shutters in some accent color, maybe dark red, add window boxes to lower right windows. Somehow the pictures don't quite do it justice, but we have made major changes in the curb appeal of the house. We aren't planning to sell it any time soon, but it makes it nicer to come home to. I never liked how it looked before.

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applestar
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Wow what a difference already! You really have an eye for this. :D

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rainbowgardener
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So much more welcoming, right? In its original incarnation you couldn't even see where the front door was nor how to get to it. The only entrance was to walk all the way up the driveway in the narrow space next to where the cars are parked, to the hidden stairs next to the right hand garage door and then all the way across the narrow porch to the door on the opposite end.... Plus to me, the lighter color instead of the nearly black wood, seems friendlier, less glowering.

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rainbowgardener
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So I'm still trying to figure out what color we painted our house.

Valspar calls it Navajo Horizon, which is nice but not really a recognized color name. Looking at samples, taupe is too brown and mauve is too pink. There's something called "rose taupe" which is close, but doesn't seem exactly right. Suggestions?


Image

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applestar
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Hmm.. my daughter said “cocoa” ... I want to say “clay” but I don’t know if that’s right either.

I really like the natural tone of it.

imafan26
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It really brightens the entry. It isn't such a dark hole anymore. If the path is a functional path and not a decorative one, I would align it where traffic would naturally flow anyway. I think it looks ok. It depends on the landscaping you put in the inner circle to guide people to the front door.

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rainbowgardener
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Path will eventually be functional. Right now the pavers haven't been set in, just dropped where they are. Just trying to get the layout right, to know where to dig. And then we took time off to paint the house, which isn't quite finished yet.

We do at some point want the whole inner circle to be landscaped with a bird bath, some kind of small tree/shrub, some ground covers, etc. May take awhile. I'm not sure exactly how the landscape would guide to the door, which is now pretty obvious and will be even more so painted feng shui red.

We will probably scatter a few small (round?) stepping stones through there for getting to bird bath and hummingbird feeder.

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rainbowgardener
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Here's what it is looking like now:

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The door hasn't been painted yet, or the trim around the door, which is still the old yellow. The window boxes just went up today, so don't have anything in them yet. And of course all the foundation plantings are tiny babies. By next year it should be starting to fill out more.

Scroll up in this thread to see what it used to look like!!

The house looks so much more finished now. It's like when they built it nearly fifty years ago, they quit without putting any of the finishing touches on.

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rainbowgardener
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here's a combined picture, old and new:
combined house pictures.jpg

imafan26
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It is a big improvement from the dark hole. I can even see the railing and you can definitely find the entry now that the stairs have been added and painted white. The new colors are so much better, you can see the features of the house better.

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rainbowgardener
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You couldn't see the railing before because it didn't exist! :shock: The porch had no railing, which was a bit of a hazard, because the only steps up to the porch were on the end, next to the garage doors on the left. Then you had to walk all the way across the narrow porch to the door which is on the opposite end of the porch. Strange design!

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rainbowgardener
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Thought I would up date how it is coming along:

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applestar
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Wow just one season’s growths has started to fill in the space and you can easily visualize how the shrubs will feature against the big walls. I like the “echo symmetry” of the railing planters and the window boxes, too. Looking great!

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rainbowgardener
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Thanks for the kind words!

The house is completely not symmetrical, so I wasn't aiming for symmetry in the plantings either, but hopefully reasonably balanced. The American beautyberry on the right side of the stairs has grown amazingly. I had one in Cincinnati, so I know it can be a monster and will need regular cutting back. But mockingbirds (of whom we have many here) like those berries. Interestingly they are the only birds I have seen eating them.

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rainbowgardener
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Some of my photobucket pictures don't show any more

Here's a combined photo of what the house looked like when we bought it and then what it looked like last year after we repainted, added front steps and walkway, porch railings and shutters and baby foundation plantings.

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Here's what the foundation plantings look like now, although it is hard to get pictures that do it justice:

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imafan26
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It is a big difference. I think the front door should be painted in a color that makes it pop more. The white rail, steps, and walkway guide you to the door, but the door itself cannot be seen. The whole entry is dark. I do love the landscaping and the definition of the beds. As it matures it should be even better.

My faucets (2 came with the house) were attached to the house one on either side yard. I actually had new water lines extended and put faucets where I needed them against the perimeter walls in the back and one faucet was moved from the wooden wall of the house to the end of the patio that had the posts replaced with a concrete partial wall and pillars. It is on the end of the patio so I can go down the side yard or the back. I did make a mistake and put back to back faucets up against a wooden 4x4 fence post. It did last 20 years but it also contributed to the rot in the post and both faucets are too close so only one can be used at a time. I did have a hose minder, and it did keep the hose neater, but since it broke the hose is back to being just laid out wherever it is when I am done watering.

The front yard hoses are coiled, but they are vinyl and not rubber hoses so they become permanently kinked, curled, and eventually too stiff. They are able to be hidden from view by plants most of the time. I do have one on a staked hose minder with a butterfly motif that was hand made. It keeps the hose neater as long as it is put back on the planter and not left out all over the place. I will never have another hose minder attached to a wall. We had some damage on the walls of the house when we purchased it. It took a while to figure out it was from the hose reel.

I hand water now. If I ever get around to fixing all of my sprinkler manifolds, I would have a lot fewer hoses lying around.



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