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Do it Yourself or Hire a Landscape Architect?

Now that we’ve decided to stay in our house [1] long term we decided it was finally time to do something about our patio. When we built our house, I think it was the only thing that didn’t quite turn out the way we envisioned.

The current patio is just too small. We’re planning to expand the patio, extend the retaining wall, regrade the lawn around it, and try to make it look like one of the fancy magazine pictures.

I tried to convince Scott that maybe we could do it ourselves. After all, I can Google and find a do-it-yourself [2] website with instructions [3], right?

Although the thought of his pregnant wife trying to read a website, add dirt, boulders, and install brick pavers or flagstone didn’t quite fly. Of course, he’s right. I like to try to do things myself, but this is way out of my league! So we agreed to have some professional landscape architects come out to draw up plans and bid on the work.

Luckily, I saw that Angie’s List [4] has a promotion right now. They waive the activation fee if you use the promo code ROOF by 5/17. I signed up and got a great list of contractors that had multiple good reviews.

While I was there, I checked out references for the solar panels [5] we’re planning on getting and dentist referrals, since mine is retiring soon. It was well worth my $2.60!

The various landscapers are coming out in the next few weeks to design the proposals. I’ll let you know how it goes!

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