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Product Information
From the Publisher
Upgrade Your Outdoor Space
Get all the knowledge and design inspiration you need to help you create the hardscapes of your dreams!
Inside this DIY project book, you'll learn how to build patios, paths, and garden walls with clear instructions, photos, and illustrations to guide you through each construction process.
Enhance your landscape and outdoor living areas with beautiful additions that will stand the test of time!
Dozens of design ideas to integrate hardscape designs into your landscape
Over 500 photographs and illustrations to help you visualize your plans
Step-by-step instructions for the techniques you need to know to build like a pro
Easy-to-follow sequences to guide you through creating stone tile walks, brick steps, stucco walls, and more
Expert advice from industry professionals and complete lists of tools and materials for each project
Your Guide to Outdoor DIY
Design Basics
Start by learning the basic principles of design and how to identify unique elements of your existing landscape and use them to your advantage. You'll learn how to work with positive and negative spaces as well as how to focus on harmony, unity, variety, geometric shapes (pictured), rhythm, and more.
Planning Your Site
Learn how to check your soil’s fertility and drainage, how to determine your existing grades, how sunlight plays into design, the proper use of trees and plants in your landscape, how to create a rough sketch of your site and transform it into a final layout (pictured), and how to find zoning ordinances and legal restrictions.
Walks
Get expert advice about considering how your walk will be used and by whom, which materials for edging you want, stone choices, plotting curves, and examining drainage. You’ll find all the guidance you need to decide on a type of walk, from lumber walks to dry-laid (pictured) and mortared walks.
Create Stunning Hardscapes
Stairways
Learn how to determine where steps are needed based on changes to ground level, how to measure tread depth and determine riser sizes, how to build brick stairs on concrete (pictured), and how to decide between wooden, concrete, and brick, ensure slip-resistant steps, and build stairways on a grade.
Patios
Get helpful guidance to determine which patio project suits your needs, how to be sure it can drain, and how to correctly slope it from your house. You'll explore how to install patio pavers and both dry-laid and mortared patios (pictured), as well as how to build patios with patterned concrete, base slabs, or tile.
Walls
Learn the craft of stonework to build elegant, functional walls! Explore stone choices, see how to create dry-laid walls using different sizes and shapes of stone (pictured), and how to place them. Learn how to build wall foundations, mortared stone walls, concrete block walls finished with stucco, and more!