Custom metal outdoor garden beds, with a bonus babbling fountain

This post is about another of our long-term, seemingly never-ending house and yard projects, custom metal planter beds in the backyard. The difference is, this one is actually done!

There is a reason this project took so long. We put up a nice new garage in 2007, which pretty much demolished the already shameful backyard.  We did a lot of landscaping close to the house in 2008 and 2009, and then in fall and winter of  2009 we built the trellis around what will become our "outdoor room".

It's not quite there yet; it needs "flooring", which I have vowed to do this coming summer.  I really couldn't do it before now because (1) the room needed to be cleared of bricks and boards, which finally happened when we recently completed the reclaimed brick paths around the garden, and (2) the metal planter boxes had not been in.  The planter boxes and fountain were actually completed in the first half of 2014. I just never got around to blogging about them.  So here goes.

Before pictures

This is the space to the side of the garage in October 2013, just as I submitted my hand-sketched plans to a metal shop to build us some shallow planter boxes. The round rocks piled in the center of the flowers are granite cobbles that were on the property when Drew bought it. I had a co-worker drill holes in them the size of a piece of copper pipe I had been hoarding. That's the start of the fountain.

This is the space at the back of the garage where the veggie garden beds will go.

Before the ground froze, I dug down to where the bottom of the metal pieces would go.

Then I covered the space so that snow would not saturate the ground through the first couple of big snow storms while waiting for the metal guys to do their work.

 During

It was January 16, 2014 by the time the pieces were ready and the crew could come out and attach the borders to the concrete foundation of the garage. 

Installed and nearly ready to accept plants in the spring of 2014!

The sprinkler pipe runs under the metal edge into the bed.

I back filled with pea gravel under the metal to provide some drainage.

 

Post-metal installation

May 2014: First garden in the new beds! Peppers did well on this south facing, elevated bed.

I don't have a great picture of the smaller of the two back side boxes, but this one shows the red rock mulch, hose reel stand, and the place for the rain barrel.

So while I had good veggies growing in the big south bed, the side yard, which I wanted to plant with ornamentals to bring us joy when we finally do get to sit in the outdoor room, needed more work.

A blank slate

 A Water Feature

Drew especially wanted a water fountain to bring the soothing sound of flowing water to our urban setting.  I was all on board because, at the time, we had some pretty loud young kids living next door, and I thought the sound would drown them out. Ha ha, get it.

Pre-positioning the fountain

I didn't really follow any specific directions to make the fountain, but I've read probably 30 step-by-step instructions in various home and garden magazines over the past 20 years, so I just combined them.  We decided not to have open water because it can harbor mosquitoes (West Nile Virus!) and I didn't want the cats drinking rotten pond water. Like I said, my co-worker drilled holes in the cobbles for me.  Next, I needed a reservoir and some way to support the very heavy stack of cobbles.

A smallish pond liner was the only thing I could find that was shallow enough and fit in the planter bed.  Then I added concrete blocks and a pump I had from a patio fountain I had made several years ago. 

Wire mesh topped by some sort of plastic coated concrete reinforcement mesh would keep out the pebbles. 

When I put it all together and plugged in the pump, I was delighted to see it worked!

Once that was in, I transplanted the bamboo from another area in the yard and added some blue mondo grass and annuals for color.

 

After pictures

Add the finishing touch of my favorite Mexican beach pebbles and mulch.

A poor panorama picture, but you get the big picture. 

So that was in June, 2014.  The plants are still alive and the pump still works. In the heat of summer, I have to fill the reservoir with the hose for a few minutes each time I plug in the fountain. We don't have it on unless we are in the backyard.  I have to drain the reservoir each winter, which is kind of a pain, but the sound of the fountain is lovely to hear as I work in the garden.  This space is going to be great once we get the patio built around it.

Recycled brick paths

Drew and I built a brick pathway around the back garden area using bricks from the back wall of our house, salvaged (Drew would say, scavenged) during the 2010 addition. It took us over 5 years but it's done now. Here's how.

As readers know, we tore out the back brick wall of our bungalow during the 2010 remodel/addition.  You can see the gory details here, but in case you don't want to relive the horror (and it was horror), here are a few pics from that spring.

The back wall of the house in June 2010 after the contractor lopped off the back shed area. The green bricks on the right were part of a double layer brick wall that would later become the pathways, although I didn't know that was the purpose at the time.

The bricks coming down.

 No wall remains.

The bricks were technically available for reuse in June of 2010, however, we were a little busy with that other project for about a year.  It continues still, but nevertheless, important yard projects need to be done.  Fast forward to June of 2014, after moving the piles of bricks from the pergola to the narrow breezeway between the vinyl fence and the garage back to the pergola again, I finally started to clean the bricks of mortar so they could be reused for the pathway around the vegetable garden.

This was my cleaning station.  I can't believe there isn't a beer bottle in this picture. I drank a lot of beer while sitting there, chiseling mortar off the bricks, listening to podcasts on my headphones.

Piles of clean bricks. I probably spent about 40 hours cleaning bricks. 

Once I had enough bricks to get me going, and I had the pathways all graded out the way I wanted them (no small feat!) I started laying bricks. August 14, 2014 was an exciting project day.

8/14/14 The first flight of bricks that I laid. I leveled the soil under the paths, then leveled and tamped 1-2 inches of sand, then pounded stakes in to anchor the plastic edging, before laying an alternating pattern of bricks. I used screws for spacers.

8/20/2014. Coming along.

11/30/2014. I laid about 20 to 25 feet of pathway before winter last year, making it almost to the compost bins so we would have a walkway to tread upon to take out the compost.

Things picked up again last spring. Drew got involved in the project once he found out power tools were involved.  We had a system where I would lay out the pattern and mark the bricks that needed to be cut, and he would do the dirty work cutting them with a masonry blade on the circular saw.  

Spring and summer 2015's work.  The corners were tricky, but Drew helped by doing most of the cutting and schlepping bricks.

By late summer, the easy straight run next to the vinyl fence was done and I came to another tricky part. I had to build a "retaining wall" under the ally fence to keep the bricks in the yard plus figure out how to leave open the escape route the cats like to use to get to the ally.

10/16/2015. Here come the bricks from the left. What a mess.

10/16/2015 Looking out from the yard.

10/17/2015. A good day's work.  The escape route for the cats is in the foreground and the gate to the alley is to the upper right.

Close up of the escape dugout for the cats.  They like to run wild back in the alley, and it would be difficult for them to get over the 6-foot vinyl fence, so I terraced the bricks just enough that they can squeeze through on their bellies.

Looking down from the top of the fence to the very large and extremely heavy rock Drew dug in to the alley as a "landing pad" for the cats to slither onto from the escape dugout.

11/17/2015. A few more days of bricklaying got me to this point.

But is was after this that I realized I didn't have enough bricks from the remodel to finish the project.  So, in true Lucy fashion, I ripped up the mini patio I had laid for the garbage cans back in Fall 2011, 

which had been my "permanent" solution to the temporary flagstone mini patio I created in 2008.

   

So now I had enough reused bricks to reuse again, but then another difficult area, which included 1) turning a corner and joining the path back to where I started, 2) widening to extend to the pergola exit, and 3) adding a rock under the downspout.

The final push.

I carried on, racing against shorter and shorter days while doing a lot of field work for work, until finally on Nov 22, with Drew's help, we finished.
 

11/22/2015: ALL DONE!  It was so cold our fingers were numb and mine were cracked and bleeding from a long weekend of brick work, but a big storm was in the near forecast so we hammered it out until 7 PM on a Sunday night.

What a feeling of accomplishment!  This project, which I started planning and pondering in 2010 to "save money" and use a recycled product instead of buying new, took me countless hours and put a serious tight spot in my hamstring that I still feel today.  But I really love the character the paths give to the garden, and they make it so easy to get my wheel barrel and garden implements around the main bed.  Here are a couple of "after" pictures.

 

And we finished none too soon, for the snow came with a vengeance in the next few weeks.

12/16/2015

 

But what about the poor transient trash cans?  Well, I rounded up some rectangular concrete pavers we had in the yard from various other projects (in my pack rat midden), bought some new red ones, and voila! An even, level checkerboard mini patio for the trash cans.  I hope this is their last resting spot. 

 

Little projects - lots of time

Why no posts? I got a new computer and it has taken me 3 months to get it up and running. Windows 8 - I'm not a fan of you!

But I've also been super busy doing house projects this spring and summer and not riding or racing very much.

 Here are a four little projects I have worked on.

Mini-alley between the house and the fence

Whoa! This one was a back breaker!  When we put the new addition on 3 years ago, we pulled the big rocks that were acting as a retaining wall to the uphill neighbor's yard out from underneath the vinyl fence.   

Note red rocks on the right side of photo that used to be under the fence.  The space I will show in the next two photos is between the fence and the deck.

So the very narrow space between our deck and the new addition was just dirt and weeds and the slope was beginning to slough underneath the fence since there had not been a retaining wall there for 3 years. This area is not very visible, but something had to be done.  

First we had to do something about drainage.  A couple of times before the addition and a couple of times after, we have had flooding or water in the east side of the basement after huge rain storms.  We took down the gutters on that side of the house during the addition, and there was no way to properly compact the backfill after the basement was poured for the new addition due to space constraints against the property line. Consequently, water was finding its way in.  We waterproofed the basement inside and out, but we still though we needed a French drain. So earlier this year, we had a laborer dig a 8 to 12 inch deep trench along 30 feet of the east side of the house.  Then we laid perforated rigid pipe in a fabric sock, surrounded by gravel and wrapped in landscape fabric.

Installing the French drain. Flooding had occurred through the basement window to my right.

The end of the French drain is a 2x3 foot well of gravel, but the perf pipe daylights with a pop-up drain.We backfilled over this. That was April-ish. 


Next, we had to dig out under the fence and build up the concrete retaining wall blocks.  I would not advise to do this after the fence is already there. Backwards - Drew and Lucy style! It was really hard work in a very awkward space, working around the two condenser units for our air conditioning. I finished up the job in July, in the heat, in a mostly confined space.  Choice working conditions.

This is what it looked like after the wall rebuild.

Once we got the retaining wall blocks put in, adding multi-colored stone was just icing on the rock-layer cake.

I used up the little bit of river pebbles we had left from the deck skirting project and some larger rock we had left from the front yard project way back.  We bought new crushed flagstone for the majority of the space.  The small green spot in the rocks in the foreground is where the perforated pipe daylights.  We have had two big storms and I have not seen this pop up yet, so it seems the French drain is handling all the water.

So nice to check this one off our list.  

Repurposed tile on a plant stand

Another "quick" project was to re-make two plant stands.  The table surface was nasty and warped, so I tossed them and asked Drew to custom cut thin pieces of plywood to fit into the metal parts of the stands. That was 5 years ago after I salvaged some of the original 1910 tile from our living room fireplace restoration project I wrote about here.  I thought it would be cool to reuse those tiles in the plant stands.  

Well, fast forward to July 2013 and I finally found the inspiration to lay the tile in there: we hired a tile setter to lay the tile around our new addition fireplace (post to follow) and he had extra thin set.  This was my first experience with tile.  I would like to do more!

The tile in these plant stands was original to the house. I found it under some nasty 1980s tile when I re-did the living room fireplace.  I think it is cool to have those tiles on display in the house again.

Plastic baggy drying rack 

I rinse and reuse plastic baggies, as long as they don't have wet gross stuff in them, but placing them all over the counter to dry is messy and ineffective.  I wanted a drying rack.  I have seen contraptions you can buy for this purpose, but a little web search and I saw this idea instead.

Put some succulents in a tray, take wire clothes hangers, cut them up, bend the ends around a piece of pipe by holding the end of one and wrapping the long end around the pipe. That makes a spiral.  Then, I used some leftover spray paint to paint them oil-rubbed bronze.  I usually store the wires under the sink when not in use, although it looks kind of cool with them in the plant too.

This only took a couple of hours, but it was another one of those "I'll get to it someday" projects that feels really good to be done with. And it works like a charm!

Laundy room doors

And finally, one of those projects that took a lot longer than I hoped.  I did this late last winter.

The main floor laundry (LOVE IT!) in our new addition has French pocket doors. A matching door contains the coats in their closet.

Coat closet and laundry.  A bit too visible! Need fabric!

 So Drew and I picked out some fabric and I set up my sewing station in the dining room.

Sewing command central.  One can do this when one's husband is away on a 4-day trip.  The cats don't mind.

All I had to do was cut the panels to fit the back of the doors and hem the edges. Then I attached with Velcro so I can change them "easily" when we get tired of the fabric.  It took a long time though.  AT least 6 episodes of Room Crashers on HGTV.

No more dirty laundry out for guests to see. Literally!

You can't tell, but when the lights are on in the closet a nice warm glow emanates from the closet. 

So those are the little projects I've been working on.  I have some big ones to share too but that will have to wait.