Your ultimate guide on how to spend 4 days in Puerto Rico including best places to visit, road trips from San Juan, and more with this jam-packed itinerary!
Plumbago is one of the stars of the summer garden. A perennial down South, an annual up North, this easy to grow flower is always a winner in the garden!
This 1980s-era home already had a stellar location. Thanks to an internal reno, it has everything else you'd want in a home, too...
A stunning combination of contemporary style and rural charm was used to create one of the 2018 top 100 homes in New Zealand – designed and constructed by Keane Building. Nestled in North Canterbury, the L-shaped, barn-style abode won Gold at the recent Canterbury Master Builders House of the Year awards, in the […]
Our Skopje city guide will show you the 15 top things to do in Skopje, North Macedonia.
Downsizing your home does not mean you have to give up outdoor space. We’ve found some innovative designs are maximizing the space with bautiful porches. Let’s start with some ideas from the “real world” and then continue to look at some renderings of ideas we had. Broad long Porch This is a very broad front […]
I think I've said this before, but I love baking bread. It's so relaxing, and the house smells so wonderful...and of course there's nothing...
A Sydney couple decided to break the mould and build a modern farmhouse-style home in North Richmond, NSW, that would stand out from the crowd while paying homage to its surroundings.
With a few simple clicks, you can now own a modern prefabricated vacation home in a matter of minutes
In a society where it’s increasingly hard to even start a decent career and loneliness is reaching epidemic proportions it might be time to think of alternatives to the near-ubiquitous privat…
With a few simple clicks, you can now own a modern prefabricated vacation home in a matter of minutes
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Visite d'une maison historique pimpée par de la couleur et du design, en Grande Bretagne, un bon exemple de modernisation à découvrir !
Did you know that several popular house plants can be toxic to your kids and your dogs and cats? Don't worry, I'm here to help!
Designed by Matthew Cunningham, this garden is an ode to Maine: colorful and tough, with perennials that stand up to all kinds of weather and varmints.
A handpicked selection of the best plants for shaded north-facing gardens. Bring colour, density and interest to your garden.
Ohrid, a beautiful village in North Macedonia is the heart of Macedonia and one of the most beautiful places in the Balkans.
Looking for amazing things to do in Yorkshire? Whether it's North, South, East or West Yorkshire, this epic bucket list will keep you busy!
Thoughtful built-ins and smart storage mean this tiny cottage lives large.
Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron have won an international competition to design the New North Zealand Hospital (Nyt Hospital Nordsjælland), one of Denmark's largest hospitals. Their design proposal, which was created in collaboration with Vilhelm F
De metamorfose van onze garage! We hebben de muren gekeimd, houtrot gerepareerd, goten vervangen en alles van een vers laagje verf voorzien.
This wonderfully designed home by Pike Properties features inviting curb appeal and luminous living spaces in Charlotte, North Carolina.
In this post, I'll take you through the best things to do in Ohrid, based on my amazing trip in North Macedonia.
Three months ago I started a seemingly innocuous project. "How hard can it be to make a flowerbed?", I said. Well I learned along the way and so I am now going to share what I learned and the steps to make your project easier. The major milestones are: Design the Area Excavate the Area Construct a Border Refill with Good Soil Plant the Flowers Cover with Mulch Required Tools Work Shoes - At several points it stormed and flooded my half-dug bed. After working for just 15 minutes I would have 2 inches of mud on the bottom. Be prepared to throw away your shoes or be stuck with permanent junk shoes. Work Gloves - This pair is actually the 2nd that I used. The first pair is in the trash. I wore through all 10 fingers on the first set. Large Spade - This is the best way to get soil up. I tried a shovel and had no luck. This worked especially well with the black clay that we have. Whatever This Is - Yup, I have no idea what to call it, but it is the best tool for clearing out defined areas. I used it dig out the outline for the bed before I started. Spreader - I used this to spread out the new soil evenly throughout the bed. Small Spade - Most people have this already. You dig holes for the bulbs and flowers with it. Heavy Duty Cart - Now I did not have this wonderful contraption for most of the project. For the first 40 or so bags, I just manually carried them to their locations. This will save your back when hauling a lot of soil. Now you may ask why I am going to all this trouble. Well that is because I have lots of Black Texas Clay underneath my yard. It has the nickname of "Black Gumbo". It soaks up water and swells. This is one of the reasons that so many people have foundation problems in our area of North Texas. Most plants need "Well Drained Soil" which is pretty much the opposite of what I have. So I replaced it. I ended up digging up only about 1 - 1.5 feet down. Others have done more, but I frankly got tired of digging. Here is what I replaced it with: Peat Moss - 10 Bags Top Soil - 20 Bags Manure - 10 Bags of the cheap stuff. They have premium manure... but I can't imagine what that means. Compost - 10 Bags Top Soil - 20 Bags Mulch - 12 Bags So let's take a look at those milestones again. Design the Area - This is probably the most important step. This allows you to put in a lot of effort without having to redo things. My wife gave in to my pleadings and helped measure the back yard space beforehand. The map came out like this: I went online and printed off a grid and then with help of a ruler hand drew the dimensions. Next, we did an initial master plan, or how we want it to look in the end. Our friends, Karson and Sharon, helped in this process. This keeps each sub-project from being vastly different and looking odd in the end. Next, we prioritized the sub-projects and focused on our first bed, outside of our bedroom. We found a plan in a landscaping book tailored to our area and used it as our base: This plan came from Creative Homeowner's Texas Home Landscaping book. I would highly recommend it. We then took our master plan for the backyard and fit the plants that we wanted into it. The end result looks like this: Sp now that you have a good plan, digging in the right spot and building a border is not a game of chance. Excavate the Area - This where all the oomph comes into play. At least 50% of my time on this project was spent digging. I am estimating that I dug out about 3,000 lbs of dirt. So be prepared for this phase to go slower than you thought. The first thing to do is to dig out the border a little bit. This allows you to be reckless inside that border with your spade. I used our hose and snaked it around into the shape that I wanted the bed to be. I then used the yet-to-be-named tool from above to strip the grass along the hose. I then removed the hose and dug a little trench and shaped the border a bit. The rest is just good ole-fashioned hard labor. One thing that I did not consider before starting this phase was where on earth all of this dug up dirt was going to go. Luckily, the lot next door to me is empty right now.Now lifting all of that dirt over the fence was no fun, but at least it is out of my yard. Construct a Border - I used two different kinds of border. We have leftover brick from the house construction and so I turned that into a decorative border: I had enough brick to go vertical and it looks good from the grass side. You can also see that famous black clay with the brick there. The fence did not need anything fancy, so I bought the cheap pliable plastic border from Lowes:Before going to the next step of refilling the area, it is a good idea to consider drainage and watering levels. I have a downspout that was pouring right into the middle of the new bed and would erode my hard work. I got a very cheap solid black tube and extended the drain out of the flower bed:I also had four different sprinkler heads that were designed for a lawn and not a flower bed. I found replacement heads that are gentler and used a simple female-female connector to attach them to the main line: Refill with Good Soil - Now is when all of those bags of 'the good stuff' comes into play. I put the good stuff in quotes because frankly anything was better than my black clay. So when I see a $20 miracle bag and a $1.85 pretty good bag, I choose the cheaper. With the number of bags that I bought, this added up to a lot of savings. I layered Peat Moss, Top Soil, Manure, Compost, and Top Soil. I had a friend recommend a combination similar to this and so far I like it. I used my spreader to evenly mix the dirt around the entire bed. Make sure at this point re-check your drainage. Make sure that it slopes away from the house for instance.In the end, my nasty soil was transformed into this: Plant the Flowers - This is the part that you actually planned for. This is the easiest stage. We planted a bunch of bulbs and using our nifty plan, I knew exactly where to go. This stage is fairly anti-climactic. Cover with Mulch - Protect your plant from moisture, bugs, and weeds with a good mulch. This last step also adds a colorful layer to the top Hopefully this guide can help you. Feel free to post and questions or suggestions. I will be following up in the Spring and beyond with how the plants grow in and look.
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Vertical stripes for a long narrow hallway will not only make your guests dizzy and nauseous, they will make the hall appear longer and more narrow!
Choosing plants for the areas along north-facing walls are challenging, since these areas are quite shady and often dry. Here are 12 good choices.
Brutalist architecture is essentially buildings with exposed, raw concrete. While they might look abrupt, there is also something amazing about them.
This week, Joe Herrin from Seattle-based Heliotrope Architects talks about creating a low-impact and low-maintenance summer home on the San Juan Islands of
Children will refer to a map, a key, and a compass rose to answer eight questions in this colorful map-reading worksheet.
From pristine beaches to history, here is an itinerary for a 3-day weekend in Wilmington, NC. Discover things to do in Wilmington, NC.
For a budget and renter friendly solution to add charm to our new home, here is how to make a renter friendly gallery wall with an awesome Ikea hack...
Wondering if Riga is worth visiting? I am here to delete all your doubts and share my favorite photos to inspire you to visit Riga!
There are many reasons why to visit this country and this article will show you some of them. Here are 28 best places to visit in Macedonia
