Thursday, May 30, 2013

Our Backyard

We have been dreaming for a long time to turn our ugly backyard into a beautiful place. A place where the kiddos can run free and let their imaginations run wild....

This is what our backyard started out as, these are actually how it looked when we bought our home.


...a wasteland of rocks and weeds!
Here are more pictures of what we started with...the bushes in this picture are deceiving! When you actually stand next to them they are a good 5 -5 1/2 feet tall!



We put the gazebo in place to make sure we liked it, before setting everything in concrete.
 The year before Sher built the retaining wall you see in this photo, it was a monster  of a project- each block weighing 60 lbs.!

I'm so happy that we were blessed with some nice, shade producing trees in the backyard!


After drawing and redrawing up a plan for the yard about a billion different times, we finally settled on this: 
The items in white are what was already existing in the yard..

..And so this is how it all began, I was really TIRED of looking at our messy rock wasteland so I decided to take it upon myself and start working on the foundation for the gazebo.
During nap time I'd go outside and move a little bit of the rocks, until I had the area clear. I deal with fatigue and really low energy levels so it was quite a task for me, but I was so happy when I accomplished it!! We already had some flagstone in the yard so I brought them all to the gazebo to make sure I had enough for the patio floor.

Here you can kind of see the stones laying under the gazebo...this encouraged my husband Sher to come help me get more things done out there! The next thing we tackled was to build a small retaining wall to house a rose garden. 


After that came time to hire out for the concrete work! Those guys were awesome! They went by my drawing and laid out all of the forms..
patio extension

future shed

sidewalks

....Next I'll share how the concrete came out!