Hey don't knock us programmers. Just kidding. I'm one also.
First of all since you are completely tearing out and rebuilding you should check if you need a permit. If you are just replacing pieces then you probably wouldn't.

I would go with the pavers of some kind. Is he planning on buying the cement by the bag or having it brought in? I don't think the bag stuff will ever be perfect, smooth, even etc. I would set them in sand. Lowes.com has a lot of great info on projects like these. I use them alot. As for the price it would depend on the pavers you pick out. Overall I have no idea on the cost difference.

As for the stump grinding, I would call a professional. How close is it to any structures? There are chemicals for that but I don't know how they work.

Sounds like a fun project. I would highly recommend starting with a few different patio building books by either Sunset or Ortho. You can find these at the library, used bookstores, Ebay, or half.com. Compare their methods and solutions before you get started. I have done a few hardscape projects and find bricks and pavers to be the most back friendly, plus my DW can carry them too ;). I don't think there is a cheap hardscape product, but I have bought remainders of pavers on craigslist, and broken concrete can be found for free at jobsites and approximates the look of stone(okay maybe not, but it looked good on a patio project I did and was free!). I would leave concrete paving to the experts. But if you decide to put it in and it looks less than desirable you could always cover it in cement tile. I would suggest a little bit of lawn, maybe St. Augustine, for your future pooch's "emergency" needs. As far as stump grinding, you may be able to rent a grinder, but it would be worth it to let a pro do it for you. Get a couple of bids. And check out the local rental yard to see what toys they have so you can make an informed decision.

The best part of your situation is that you can break all these jobs up into small projects that can be done when time and $$ allow. Try not to get overwhelmed. Patios in Rome weren't built in a day.

I have found some ideas on the redwood site I have linked below.

And just for fun, if you are close to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo they have a landscape architecture program. Maybe you could get the help of an aspiring designer? Good luck.

Here is a link that might be useful: calredwood.org

Kelly:

In what city do you actually live?

Joe

If your temps are extreme, concrete can get really **hot**. Make sure you have arranged for shade of some sort! You can plant trees, and in the interim until they grow up, arrange a temporary pergola with beams and some Sunbrella fabric - I saw a great example done with parachute silk (actually stabilized nylon, I think) by a designer, pretty neat but of course you want to consider the local wind factor.

If you use stones, setting them in sand is easier. Be aware it is really back-breaking labor, but the offset is that it is easier to lay them level and KEEP them level, than with many little smaller bricks. Trust me on this, prep is important and you really want to do it right and choose the material that will last a reasonably long time. One downside to DIY is that you never want to RE-DO it ever again, lol.

Raised beds will help direct the puppy to where you want to go but leave your important plants untouched. Remember that you can use just inexpensive boards and posts to start off, then later as budget $$ allow, replace them with handsome permanent structures out of cinder block, concrete precast stones, or brick. You may want to change locations of some of them anyway, to catch more/less sun as the plantings evolve. When laying out such temporary beds, remember that permanent replacements will take more width, so adjust your path spacing accordingly for future needs.

You do need to kill the stumps because tree stumps have been known to go on living, their roots continually sucking up moisture/nutrients from the plants you want to grow. Or the tree may resprout, which is a nuisance because the second growth trunks are usually weak, numerous and angled (more personal experience).

My gardener, who isn't a designer or architect but just a guy who loves to grow things and work outdoors, so he turned it into a nonconformist paying career, drills holes in the stumps and pours bleach in. Don't know how much he uses, but according to him it works and is much cheaper than grinding. Once dead, you can berm soil around the trunk and let it naturally decay.

Grinding has the advantage of being quick, albeit noisy. Plus you can have them leave the chips/sawdust to turn them into your own compost, I think. You can probably get rough quotes over the phone, which will let you decide whether your budget can handle it.

My best suggestion is to create an overall plan for the things you think you want to do in the yard. Barbecue? Entertain both adults and kids? Sandbox? As you live in the house/yard and see how the seasons change, your overall plan may change somewhat. Do your install gradually, in phases. Although it may cost you a little more that way, the immediate budget impact is far more manageable - we took three years from start to finish, on ours. No way we could have afforded it all in one lump sum.

Make sure you train your dog to use ONE particular spot to do his "business." You will regret it otherwise. The secret to animal training is unwavering consistency in a firm voice. People were always amazed I could train my cats, but you just have to use a few simple rules and NEVER, EVER change them. Show them you're their "alpha" and it'll all fall into place, unless you buy a terrier [grin]!

And remember that pathways should be wide enough for at least two adults, whenever possible. This also allows for easy egress by contractors/homeowners lugging anything from bags of soil to dollies full of building supplies.

If you don't use those stones for a patio, they make decent paths that are wheelbarrow (and go-kart) friendly. Or, you can lay a dry concrete path - not anywhere near as durable as poured concrete, but cheaper and easier to do. Sunset magazine showcased the technique in an article but it doesn't seem to be on their website, unfortunately. I gave a copy to my gardener and he used the technique to install an fairly large, secondary patio for us in 2003. This was NOT a long-term solution - it is already cracking and chipping under light-to-moderate usage - but it works for us as it keeps those dratted weeds down (summer fire hazard) and enables us to more easily manage the raised garden beds that surround it. We know we will probably sell our house within the next 2-8 years so didn't have to care, as you do, about a more permanent install.

Remember to sow a lot of annual seeds too - seeing lots of colorful flowers will keep your enthusiasm going! A small touch, but very important as what lies ahead of you is going to be a lot of hard physical work. It is easy to get discouraged, so like dealing with kids and puppies, take time to savor the little successes, even temporary ones.

Good luck!

You can drill holes in the stump and pour in this stuff from the nursery...or rent a machine to grind down the stump...We have done it and it's not hard..While the tree is rotting, we will have little mushrooms pop up for years..St Augustine is great..it will grow over the stump in one season...if you stand long enough , it will grow over YOU...Great for kids and dogs..

I would consult a list of plants that are toxic to dogs and make sure you don't plant any of those if the dog is going to have unsupervised access to that area. Some dogs wont eat plants but others will. I know ours did as puppies but they sample less plants now that they are older.

Here is a link that might be useful: plants toxic to dogs

Wow, thanks for all the great tips. I'll be sharing these ideas with DH and we'll try to come up with a plan.

Funny you mentioned Cal Poly, holedigger. DH works there and we are both alumni. I'll check into landscape architecture and see if any students are available for this sort of thing.

My comment is about the concrete. (It applies to pavers too). It is a mistake I made that would be too expensive now to rectify. There is an area of the backyard in which we had concrete installed. (nicely done, with red brick borders. More expensive than you'd expect, after all it is just concrete!)

To cut down on future maintenance, we had the concrete poured right up to the property line/fence that separates the neighbor's yard from ours. The concrete professionals asked if we wanted to leave the ground along the fenceline uncovered by concrete in case we wanted to plant flowers/shrubs/small trees. We said no, we did not want the work of maintaining a planting area. We had the rest of the yard for gardening purposes.

Well, later the neighbor moved out, the little house was sold and then demolished. The huge avacado tree in the neighbor's yard that screened his yard from our yard was removed. ALthough the empty lot has been vacant for 6 months, undoubtedly the new home will be larger - much larger- than the original home. So now I would give anything to have a planting area where I could grow some hedges or small trees to screen out the new home which will overlook our house and much of our yard.

So while concrete is no-maintenance, leaving enough area for future planting would be wise. Plus concrete is HOT and not especially relaxing if you enjoy plants and nature. PLUS pets who regularily do their business on concrete can make your little yard smelly.

Kelly:

Sounds like a fun project, I'm sure you and your husband will come up with some good solutions. I can only really speak to the stump grinding question. When we bought our house in Northern CA there was a five foot tall "stump" on the side of the house. After much agonizing over how we could deal with it I finally called someone who does that professionally. In less than sixty minutes *poof* it was gone. What's more I had a fat pile of ground up wood to use for mulch/compost. It cost around $120.00 as memory serves. I really feel that to get something done quickly, safely and right the first time hiring a professional was the single best way to deal with that monstrous thing. So you might seriously consider fitting the cost into your budget to just get the problem addressed. Hope that helps.

Kathryn

You can always remove the stumps the old fashioned way, by hand. It's extremely hard, back breaking work, but I removed some stumps from clusters of Yucca trees and eucalyptus that were six foot in diameter with a mattock and chain saw.

Do you have to remove the stumps? They make good stands to place pots of plants and trailing flowers. They also make a good trellis of sorts to grow climbing plants.

Nancy

Hi Kelly,
Another good reason to avoid concrete -- in addition to the permanance and the heat retention, is that permeable paving allows water to get into your ground and will not add to the issue of toxic run off. We installed a flagstone walk set in sand several years ago and it has been great. I do have to pull a few little weeds between the pavers once in a while, but that's it. We put in decomposed granite in the backyard, we skiped laying down weed block and now I have bermuda grass coming up in one area -- bleah.
Another inexpensive way to cover a whole lot of ground is to lay down playground bark or other mulch over some sort of weed block. We did this last fall at my children's school to transform an unsucessful lawn into an outdoor learning area. We dug down a few inches, laid down old carpet as a weed block, and raked out a big load of bark mulch. When we recently put trees in we just pushed aside the mulch, used an exacto to cut the carpet and put the trees in. So far, so good!
Good luck, and have a great time!
-Ellen

What are you thinking of substituting for grass? I don't have a suggestion for you, but you are probably wise to think of something else, or a really tough, drought tolerant lawn. We raised 2 boys and a dog in a small yard, and the lawn always looked so bad. It just could not take the traffic. We had St. Augustine and shade, and the lawn never grew tough enough for the kids and dog. St. Augustine in a sunny yard might work.

I'm in agreement with katefisher. Hiring someone to grind up the stumps will give you a chance to start your new compost pile, while working on the basics. Even if it costs $100.00, in the beginning, you will be in need of compost when the time comes to plant your garden. In the meantime, those grindings can be turning into "pure gold."

We had a tree removed a few years ago. It was a surprise to see that huge thing turned into a small pile of shredded wood. I just added some succulent type greens (ice plant - of which we have plenty), and it composted in no time.

We have used a lot of pavers and bricks for walks and patios. Nice if the underlayment is done well.

Just my 2 c's.

Bejay

Re dealing with weeds in a flagstone patio: I find that a teakettle full of boiling water takes care of that quickly and easily.

We recently purchased one of those small propane bottles and attached a torch to it. It is great for such things like removing old paint, starting barbecues, burning weeds between pavers, and removing and sterilizing bee equipment.

It was from Home Depot. Its the kind with the off/on button so it can be controlled better. Lots of good uses for it, especially those fesky weeds between pavers. No need for Round-Up there.

My 2 c's.

Bejay

Pavers are the way to go for a small area. We put in pavers in our yard at our former residence (condo). My husband and a friend did it in one weekend. My husband left a 3 foot planting area all the way around. He installed a drip irrigation system that just hooked up to the hose bib. He put a splitter on the bib so we could still have a hose back there. He did all of this using the friendly employees at Lowe's and a little internet research. We didn't even need to hire anyone. It was HARD work for him. I should also add that he ended up buying the rock and sand he needed for the base of the pavers from a local materials company rather than Lowe's because it was much cheaper. I can't remember where he got the pavers. Sometimes you'll see ads on craigslist for free of almost free pavers when people order too many for their project, so you could check there, too. But if you do the pavers the right way the first time, you won't have them shifting or lifting all of the time.

We have a medium sized dog who kills everything that isn't shrubbery or thorny, so grass has been an uphill battle for us in our new place. Grass and dogs just don't mix. Groundcover isn't very child friendly, either, and if it's thick enough (like ivy) it attracts rodents. So I'm thinking pavers with a planting area is your best bet. We've looked into the artificial turf, but it gets very hot in full sun. Not great for little bare feet and paws.