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A Pretty Happy Home

Life, DIY and Random Things That Make Me Smile

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    • About
    • Contact
  • Shop
    • Apparel and Shoes
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    • Crafts and Sewing
    • Decor
    • Furniture
    • Home Improvement
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  • Projects
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  • Home
  • About
    • About
    • Contact
  • Shop
    • Apparel and Shoes
    • Books
    • Crafts and Sewing
    • Decor
    • Furniture
    • Home Improvement
    • Kid Favorites
    • Kitchen
  • Projects
    • Cleaning
    • Clothing
    • Colonial Farmhouse
    • Crafts
    • Decorating
    • DIY Projects
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  • building a curved fieldstone wall and fieldstone steps
    DIY

    Curved Fieldstone Wall: Part 7, The Stairs

    September 10, 2025 /

    Welcome back to our Curved Fieldstone Wall Series, where we attempt to rebuild the fieldstone walls in our front yard using historical masonry techniques. Today we are talking about the stairs between the two wall sections. The first wall section is already complete. The stairs were not a part of the original plan. We intended to leave them alone because we were going to exercise restraint, like the reasonable DIYers that we are. Hahahahahaha. The original stairs connecting the driveway to our sidewalk were concrete, which makes sense. The sidewalk and the stairs match. The stairs were a little wonky in size, and one looked newer than the other, but…

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    annisa 6 Comments

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  • DIY

    Curved Fieldstone Wall: Part 6, Demo Section 2

    September 8, 2025 /

    I’m back with part 6 of our Curved Fieldstone Wall Series. This time we’re discussing demo of the second wall section we’re working on. Here’s the thing about our DIY projects. They never go according to plan. Why do we bother planning? I don’t rightly know. We expected the demolition of the second wall section to go as quickly as the first section. While the second wall section is twice as long as the first, it was built the same way. In addition, a quarter of it had already demoed itself for us. THAT’S the kind of effort we like to see from inanimate objects. I guess the rest of…

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  • exposing a stone foundation wall and repointing it with lime mortar
    DIY

    Curved Fieldstone Wall: Part 5, Porch Wall

    September 1, 2025 /

    We’ve been working on rebuilding a curved fieldstone wall in front of our house. Part of that wall connects to our front porch, and a little oopsie occurred to the porch wall while doing demo. We didn’t intend to touch the porch while doing this curved fieldstone wall project. We know when our plates are full. Unfortunately for us, the unintended consequence of jackhammering three inches away from the porch was that the vibrations traveled, and we cracked a section of the skim coat covering the porch foundation. That was fine. We could probably fix it. Then, much to our horror, the cracked portion of skim coat FELL OFF the…

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  • newly rebuilt curved fieldstone wall using lime mortar and natural fieldstone
    DIY

    Curved Fieldstone Wall: Part 4, REVEAL Section 1

    August 27, 2025 /

    It’s reveal day for section 1 of our curved fieldstone wall! Can I get a WOO to the HOO? I know some of you made a woohoo sound in your head, so thank you for that! We are fortunate to live on a property that is framed by low fieldstone walls. 250 years ago, our property was much larger than it is now and would have been farmed. We assume the stone walls or fences were built as a practical way of dealing with all of the stones that were pulled out of the soil to make it arable. Fast forward to the present, and there are multiple sections of…

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  • diy curved fieldstone wall with lime mortar and natural fieldstone in progress
    DIY

    Curved Fieldstone Wall: Part 3, Progress Section 1

    August 25, 2025 /

    Progress feels good, and we have made significant progress on building Section One of our curved fieldstone wall. If you missed Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, those are a rockin’ good time. Here’s the section of wall that we are rebuilding. With all of the rocks out, that area looked kind of weird. Scratch that. There was no “kind of.” It looked flat out weird. Best we get to remedying that. I started by repointing a section of the front porch foundation that we exposed during the wall demolition. Not only does this foundation need repointing with lime mortar, but this way I’ll be able to secure…

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  • diy curved fieldstone wall demoing the old wall on a colonial era farmhouse
    DIY

    Curved Fieldstone Wall: Part 2, Demo Section 1

    August 18, 2025 /

    In case you missed Part 1, we are building a curved fieldstone wall. Or, perhaps, it is more accurate to say we are rebuilding a curved fieldstone wall. Today’s post is all about demoing the first section we are rebuilding. This section of wall connects to the front porch and serves as a retaining wall for a flowerbed. Demo is supposed to be the easy part of any project, right? Hahahahahaha. Easy might not apply to concrete. Or maybe easy just doesn’t apply to anything we do. Once again, the hammer drill with a chisel attachment was our MVP for taking down a stone wall, but we did use a hammer…

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  • BEFORE DIY low curved fieldstone wall
    DIY

    Curved Fieldstone Wall: Part 1, The Plan

    August 13, 2025 /

    Drumroll, please! Our next masonry project will be to rebuild a curved fieldstone wall in our front yard. Who’s excited for this one? *raises my own hand* I am excited for this project mainly because this fieldstone wall has become a major curb appeal issue, and not in a good way. Remember the children’s rhyme about Humpty Dumpty? Now imagine Humpty Dumpty sitting on the wall, and the reason he fell off was because the wall collapsed under him. That’s the sketchy situation with the wall in front of our house. Most of it is a low, curved fieldstone wall that is only a couple of feet high. There is,…

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  • DIY fieldstone stairs building fieldstone stairs outdoors
    DIY

    Building Fieldstone Stairs: Part 3, The Reveal

    July 28, 2025 /

    Here’s the “tada” moment you’ve been waiting for, the reveal of our fieldstone stairs. If you’re just joining us, you can catch up on Part 1 and Part 2 of this series. It’s a rockin’ good time. The short story is we thought we’d see how hard it would be to build stairs out of natural fieldstone. This means using stones dug out of our backyard and used in their natural state. No clean edges. No uniform sizes. No idea how it will look when you’re done. Well, we had a vague idea. But it turned out even better than we imagined and, believe it or not, it wasn’t the…

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  • building fieldstone stairs DIY fieldstone stairs
    DIY

    Building Fieldstone Stairs: Part 2

    July 23, 2025 /

    Welcome back! We are building fieldstone stairs. This is a DIY project we’ve never attempted before and may never attempt again. We have just enough confidence, competence, and delusions to approach new projects with an “everything is figure-out-able” attitude. Today I’m going to overshare our process for building fieldstone stairs. Please note when I say fieldstone I mean actual stone taken out of the ground (my backyard) and used in its natural form. This is not stone purchased on a pallet from the stone quarry that has even, predictable dimensions. That would make this project infinitely easier – a concept with which we are wholly unfamiliar. Let’s get into the…

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  • diy stone steps building fieldstone steps before
    DIY,  gardening and landscape

    Building Fieldstone Stairs: Part 1

    July 21, 2025 /

    My friends, it is time for our next project, building fieldstone stairs! Have we done this before? Nope. Is that going to get in the way of a good time? Maybe. This project needs a little context, so let’s step on up and get to it. Where will we be building fieldstone stairs? Outside, of course. There is a set of wood stairs in our backyard (4 steps) that we walk down to get to the first floor of the Carriage House. The stairs are set in the middle of a loosely stacked fieldstone wall and below a slightly out-of-level flagstone. Why we are replacing the old steps? For kicks.…

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Hi! I'm Annisa.

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  • Happy List: #404
  • Curved Fieldstone Wall: Part 7, The Stairs
  • Curved Fieldstone Wall: Part 6, Demo Section 2
  • Happy List: #403
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