It’s the dream of every homeowner: You open the door and let the world outside draw you far beyond everyday life’s worries and responsibilities. The more common reality, however, is that very little is out there to draw you. The swath of green is just grass that needs to be cut and trimmed. The fence is utilitarian—nothing special—and the “patio” is a boring concrete pad. Truth is, you love having your own personal slice of Washington, and you’d like to entertain, but your outdoor spaces simply aren’t entertaining. A little bit of hardscaping can change everything, and the experts at Marson and Marson Lumber are ready to show you how to make the dream real.
We’re offering gorgeous hardscaping ideas like fire pits, barbecues and waterfalls made easy and a ton of know-how on how to prep your yard for hardscape features that you can build and install yourself or with professional help. We’re featuring one of our favorite vendors—Basalite—and their outdoor living kits using Basalite’s distinctively tasteful structural block, stone, interlocking pavers, paving stones and retaining wall systems. Once you see the possibilities their hardscaping kits bring, you’ll be ready to follow our step-by-step quick guide on how to prep your yard and start building—and entertaining too.
Complete DIY Hardscaping Features To Create Outdoor Living Spaces
Hardscaping an area gives a yard bones—a framework of focal points that create outdoor spaces ready to hold all of the softer elements like plantings, furnishings, lighting and people. The challenge is to define a place without four walls and a ceiling yet make it feel like home, and this is exactly where Basalite’s outdoor living kits excel. Choose the outdoor space you’d like to create, and ground it with the Basalite kit of your choice. Basalite’s outdoor features are both beautiful and functional, creating an amazingly easy new project approach for builds that used to be complex undertakings:
Outdoor Fireplace Kits—Create a dramatic scene with a wide, traditional outdoor fireplace complete with a generous hearth and handy wood box.
Fire Ring and Fire Pit Kits—Center a social gathering on a circular fire ring or fire pit set in a matching circle paver kit. Choose your style, size, stone, grate and insert preferences, and more. You can even choose between a wood-fired pit and gas logs.
Water Feature Kits—Replace or complement fire with an opposing waterfall that shimmers in a soothing cascade.
Pillars and Seat Wall Kits—Use pillars as vertical interest, arrange them to set off a gathering area or passageway, or define boundaries with walls offering convenient integrated seating.
Grill and Bar Kits—With at least eight different kits ranging from four feet to eight in length and with options for surrounds, grills, sinks and counter configurations, you may even want a pair—matching bar and grill kits.
Stone Table Kits—Make dining an experience in rustic elegance with stone tables and tabletops in dining, pub or bistro sizes that will never blow away, take very little maintenance and last a long time.
The Kitchen Kits by Necessories—Let Basalite stone cabinets topped with gleaming lengths of black pearl granite countertop hold your sizzler grill, wood-fired oven, smoker, prep and full-sized outdoor sinks, refrigerator, side burners and more for the full outdoor culinary experience.
Basalite makes customizing your outdoor living kits easy. Choose the options and accessories that you want to tailor your new space to fit your yard and your lifestyle perfectly. You can even fly solo if you like, using kit ideas for inspiration as you choose from Basalite’s full line of masonry hardscaping products. Then, with your decisions made, you can start prepping your site for a flawless installation step by step.
Our Quick Guide for How To Prep Your Yard for a Hardscape Feature
Any hardscaping project worth doing deserves the proper prep because the steps are crucial to both your chosen feature’s immediate success and its enduring lifespan. The prep that you do now can also impact future hardscape features that you might want to add later. So, we’re breaking prep into five steps that will get the job done and set you up for a successful kit installation.
- Think forward when choosing the site.
Ensure that the area will be able to support the new feature’s size, scale and functions. Drainage and water collection for reuse, proximity to utilities and plans for future features are all factors to consider. Will one feature obstruct the view of or access to another later on? Will it need additional excavation work to prevent runoff issues? Will it integrate well with its surroundings so that it looks like it belongs? Will it be the perfect cornerstone project to anchor a larger area that you can develop over time? - Level the accurately measured and marked site down to the frost line.
Knowing the depth of the frost line where you are is important because that’s how far down water molecules that are suspended in the soil will freeze. If your foundation is above the frost line, your structure and even paved areas may fail due to the heave of freeze and thaw. Dry laid hardscaping features like Basalite’s outdoor living kits rely on a stable, level base, so the site’s foundation should begin below the frost line. In Washington, local frost lines can range from a shallow five or six inches near the coast to well over 24 in spots farther east. While 12 inches is a common target, you should check your local and county building codes for the foundation frost line specifications that apply to you. - Set level batter boards for the top four inches of the excavated foundation area.
You’ll be filling your excavated foundation area with successive layers of crushed gravel and compacting each layer. At the end, you’ll need to ensure that it’s level. To do that, you’ll need a neat, level framework of batter boards around the perimeter to use as a guide. For supplies, you’ll need stakes, 1x4s, screws, a driver or drill, a measuring tape, a hammer and a level. You’ll want to adjust the perimeter frame batter boards until they’re all level with the finished foundation’s intended surface height. While batter boards are only temporary guides and can be challenging to set properly, the benefits they yield in sharp corners, straight lines, exact measurements and level surfaces are permanent—unmistakable signs of a professional prep. - Fill the clean, excavated foundation area with successive compacted layers of gravel.
For the best result, you’ll want to lay the crushed gravel for your foundation in about four-inch layers, compacting each layer to ensure a solid, uniform base and prevent shifting later. You may want to rent a gasoline-powered compactor that will tamp each layer uniformly. When you get to the batter board level and lay the gravel, you’ll screed it by sliding a long straight board atop opposing batter boards to distribute the stone evenly and rid the area of excess before compacting this last layer. - Finish with a thin, level layer of screed sand.
For a completely smooth, solid foundation, spread a layer of sand about half an inch thick, and screed it with a straight edge just as you leveled the top layer of gravel. You should now have the perfect, professionally prepped foundation for your new hardscape feature.
Build the Perfect Hardscape Feature for Your Yard
Building a hardscape feature like a fireplace, grilling area, bar, patio, waterfall or fire pit is a simple step-by-step process that’s worth doing right, and the pros at Marson and Marson Lumber know just how to help. Whether it’s selecting the best feature to start with, making sure that a fountain or fireplace can be sited properly, integrating a wall and patio into the surrounding landscape, or coordinating the entire process from designing your dream yard to prepping the site and installing the finished feature, we make it all possible. Come visit our hardscape design and installation professionals at any of our other locations in Leavenworth and Cle Elum. With custom hardscaping kits that you’ll love and a little bit of professional-level prep, your yard can be entertaining, and it’s just outside your door.