On a recent sojourn to Home Depot Eric and I spotted a nice price on a Husky 1550 PSI Electric Power washer. We've been talking about getting one for a while to clean off the years of dirt and grime from the concrete floors in both the front and rear of the house. We picked it up at the time but only just had occasion to use it today. While it's not as powerful as some of the more expensive versions, or a gas model for that matter, with a little bit of patience it did a great job of getting all the construction debris and years of caked-on mess from the backyard concrete floor.
In this photo you can see the massive difference between the finished sections in the top left and the unfinished on the bottom right.
Here's a before shot of the steps to the yard area:
And after a few minutes of power washing (not to mention some weeding) you can see that those bricks are actually red:
I love getting excited about silly things like power washers!
We've had major backyard planning on the brain this weekend. We went to a local distributor to see endless options for paver materials as we are thinking of doing a 12 foot circular paved section in the upper grassy area. We're trying to finalize a hardscaping design in the next few days (I've spent a lot of time in Visio this weekend working it all out) so where there is something to post I will show you. We're vacillating between doing some sort of pergola in the yard or just having a large umbrella for cover. I'm afraid we might run into DoB issues with a large covered structure and also fearful that it will need to be metal instead of wood for non-combustible code purposes. Also, a large structure could unnecessarily close off the space and make it look smaller than it actually is. We're trying to find space up there for the bench swing, a paved area for a decent size table and chairs and a raised bed for plantings and a pond. Even though a Pergola would be great I'm leaning towards a large, offset umbrella with solar lights like this one:
For the concrete area we were planning on tiling the floor section and applying a stone face to the vertical walls. However, when surfing around for ideas last night I came across these wood tiles that could be laid over the concrete area and add an interesting texture to the surface when combined with a natural stone siding. The more I think about it the more I like the idea of doing this flooring over the concrete rather than slate. We'll do slate in the front yard, but this could be a nice alternative in the back.
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