Help designing Front Walkway (close to driveway and no sidewalk)
I’m struggling with our front yard, and looking for advice on how to re-design our front walkway.
We have a small front yard and a natural path is developing where we and the mailman inevitably walk (we often park on the street). It’s clear to me that we need to re-do our front walkway, but I’m not sure on the placement or material. I’m willing to take out the existing path between the driveway and front steps to create a path that also connects to the street. If relevant, we live in Zone 7 and it’s mostly shaded, current ground cover seems to be moss-ish, which is obviously showing the natural path to the street and along the street since we have no sidewalk.
A few options I’ve considered:
1 - Widen the driveway with same material to also serve as a walkway.
2 - Remove current walkway and extend a straight path to the street, with pavers along the street to serve as a sidewalk.
3 - Remove current walkway and design a curved path that both connects to the driveway and also meets the street closer to the center of the yard.
I’d welcome any recommendations or drawings!
Comments (11)
29 days agolast modified: 29 days ago
PRO29 days agoWhat's going on with your home? Is the color of the brick what you posted or what I found?
No matter the brick, if your trim is that plain white it all wrong for your home IMO.
The house looks so much better with a bit of warm tones in the white.
You've let the shrubs get too tall and leggy Cut them back as noted.
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Desperately need help with front walkway redesign
Comments (5)The thing about landscape improvements is that most people who buy a house expect it to have at least some landscaping, and certainly expect a sidewalk, so they will not pay extra for it. Kind of like a roof. They expect a serviceable roof, so while they may deduct for the cost of replacing a bad roof, it doesn't necessarily mean you can add the replacement cost to the sale price if you do it ahead of time. In addition, a new owner will probably have her own ideas about what kind of landscaping is suitable, and tear out and replace much of what you've done, unless you are putting in a really spectacular, high end job that's so wonderful that they wouldn't want to change it. You don't give any hints as to your location, but zone 6 gets snow, and you'll have to be able to clear the walk in winter. Stepping stones are OK for a casual secondary path through a garden, but the approach to the house, especially for strangers to the layout, should be as direct and clear as possible, and hazard free. The minimum width for walkway should be 4 feet, IMO, and 5 is better if you have the space. It's unpleasant to have to go to the door in single file, and a problem if Aunt Bessie needs someone offer her an arm on the way in. You end up looking something like a conga line. I would forget about a flower bed against the house, and either plant groundcover or a few annuals at most. Anything tall will fall over onto the walk, especially as it leans out for more light. Shrubs will require constant trimming and will end up looking nasty. The cost of installing a new walkway depends on materials you choose, the size of the project, how much grading/prep work is required, demolition of the old walk, and the skill level of the installer. An experience artisan will cost more than a guy with a pickup truck and an account at Dome Heapo. Add the cost, if any, for dumping the waste you break up. You must be young folks, because I wouldn't want to demolish a concrete walk and install a new one without outside help....See MoreNeed help planning a brick walkway/end of driveway fence & garden
Comments (10)It's easy to see that after two years you're anxious to get going and "do" something. The house appears to be in a somewhat rural setting. You don't indicate what part of the US you live in. A brick walkway suggests to me a more formal setting, though perhaps you envision working toward a "Williamsburg" look. I would put the digging on hold until you have worked out a more comprehensive plan for the whole property. Not that you have to have every last detail figured out. Make a list of some of the issues. Here, in no particular order, are some that come to mind: 1. Need dry footing from car to house entrance. 2. Actual house entrance (porch) and "visual" entrance (front door) are not the same. 3. House and barn are not related, either architecturally, or spatially. 4. Need to hide childrens' play equipment. 5. Safe place for children to play. 6. Would like some flower beds. And so on. If you have a survey of the property that shows the location of the buildings relative to each other you might find it easiest to work through these things on paper, as a professional would. It could be worthwhile for you to engage the help of a qualified landscape professional, even on an hourly basis, just to help you get started in the right direction....See MoreHELP! Driveway/Sidewalk Design - New Construction, Seattle, WA
Comments (9)"But I also don't want it to look like a concrete prison yard ..." I don't know how literally you are worried about that. A prison yard is going to be plain, undecorated concrete without plantings along its edges ... and some weeds growing in the cracks. Given that you have a garage at either side of the house, and need access to the front door between the two garages, there's not any way to avoid a sizeable expanse of paving. And it would be a mistake to shrink the entrance walk beyond a certain minimal size, attempting to compensate for the amount of paving. But I don't think you need to worry about it looking like a prison yard because you can use a decorative paving, in a fitting sensible shape, with landscaping around its perimeter, and without weeds in cracks. Still, it's going to be a lot of paving -- because that's the layout of the house you built. To try to shrink paving beyond its functional necessity is only going to backfire. It will look bad simply for looking inadequate for the garage arrangement. So basically, accept reality and get over it. That you don't already have a site plan, you will need to create a simple base plan. That's rectangles for the house, a line for the road, showing the apron to the drive -- with everything in scale so it's an accurate representation of the space available for making the drive. This is just measuring in real life, and making measured lines with a pencil & paper. If there is no base plan, how would anyone communicate layout ideas back to you? It would be difficult to do with words alone, which is why your architect did not write an essay only in order to convey the home design to the builder. Something like this, but accurate... It would be good to show the property lines, too. (BTW, not having a base plan on which to try out ideas would go a long way to explaining why your are "drawing a total blank." You've got nothing to work with.)...See Moreneed advice front yard project: add walkway & expand driveway
Comments (19)I don't know why some commenters are talking about a new pathway - a sidewalk - to the street. The OP never asked for that. Also, never asked about additional parking. Simply, if you measure a parking space at your local grocery store, it probably ranges from 9' wide down to 8' wide. If you're lucky and it's 10' wide with the double lines then you feel much more safe from dings in your door, and can step fully out of your vehicle, right? Now, a typical residential driveway width is 16'-18'. So think if you drive up the left side and park outside and leave room for the 2nd car on the right. If you were playing the "lava" game and not trying to walk on the grass, you'd have to shimmy out just like in a skinny grocery store parking space. Adding a border will help with that, as well as looking better to many people, and will not accentuate the garage as being more "in your face." I would argue it actually brings the scale down if you choose colors/materials that accentuate a design element of your house, regardless of how wide the width of the driveway actually winds up as including the border. Here are some examples of a border:...See MoreRelated Professionals
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PRO
28 days ago- PRO27 days ago
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PRO27 days ago- 15 days ago
15 days agoI do not think widening the driveway to the width of the entrance is a good idea unless you find some way to create a separation between the two— this could be a small strip of planting area (like you have with your current situation but have that extend to street), or you could use a brick or paver border on both sides of the “sidewalk” to delineate it from the driveway. Just using the same material would feel too much like a parking lot to me.
I also like celery’s rendering, but if that’s too ambitious you could still do a scaled-down version of your #3 option, which is what I think I would do. The landing at the bottom of the stairs could be the connecting point to the driveway while flowing into the curved walkway that takes you to the street. Here’s a quick/ primitive sketch to give a sense of what you might do. With this option I’d probably also turn most (if not all) of the yard into a perennial garden, which would add a lot of nice depth and curb appeal to your lot.
Celery. Visualization, Rendering images