Concrete Edging
As part of
my stamped concrete patio,
I had some concrete edging added around the perimeter. I also call
this a "mow strip" since the intent is to have it placed at the same
level as the ground, and then the mower wheels just go on this, and you don't
have to use
weed wacker to trim the grass. My wife wasn't too keen on the idea (but then
again, I'm the one that mows the grass), but she really likes how it turned
out ... although there was some issues with the concrete pour of it as they
kinda goofed and didn't follow my patio deck designs.
The edging was was done well on the west curved edge of the patio,
but the concrete forms were
not laid properly for the straight south edge.
First, there was a "pinching in" that looked really wierd.
Fortunately, this was (mostly) fixable
by trimming some of the straight edge. So while this isn't quite "correct",
it is probably the best one can do as visually as the "pinch" isn't as seeable
as before since it's stretched out a bit.
The much harder issue is there is a vertical rise above the surface of
the ground as it moves to the East. This is a real bummer, since I
don't think this is truly fixable. I noticed and discussed this right
after the pour with the main guy and he said they would do whatever
it took to make be happy.
I guess one could shave a few inches off
the top of the concrete edging, but this would make it look different, and even
if you went all the way around the edging, it would be hard to do well;
my experience with a patch on the
concrete flower pots
isn't too good so far.
So the proposed solution was to build up the nearby ground and rocks so
that the concrete edging looks like it was always this way.
We even had to add another layer of 6x6 wood beams to the window well
so everything looked level and correct.
The shame is about about 10 minutes of work pre-concrete-pour would
have caught this, but unfortunately, it ended up being a lot more work
to fix after the fact ... but it came out pretty decent - see the
before/after pictures below.
Looks good on the left - notice the concrete edging rise as it moves right
Concrete edging is supposed to be level with the ground - NOT!
Lawn and rocks will need to be built up
Note extender box on outlet - this is because we had a concrete blockage in
the PVC pipes between the 2nd and 3rd flower pot ... so that PVC pipe in
the picture runs about 70' around the perimeter of the concrete edging to
power on the West side - yea, that was a lotta work to do also!!!
Spring/2007 - 18 months later
Concrete Edging blends well with grass and rocks
Looking West across the Concrete Edging
