The Backyard - After

Remember the before:

And now, the after:

The most painful aspect of the yard for me had to be installing the "flagstone" looking cement pavers going across the front of the deck.  I can't remember how much they weighed (probably 40lbs), but I kept picking them up and down to re-level the sand, change the pattern, etc.  A full day of squats, with weights.  I was fine that day - just some shaky legs, but so sore later I could barely move for a week!

The path around the yard wasn't too bad, little light pavers. Only overwhelming in number, many carloads of them.  The people at Lowe's and the neighbor across the street took pity and helped me load & unload them.  And more blessings were evidenced by that path - once again, I was in a time crunch.  I started laying the path from the arbor area going to the corner of the yard, and started from the deck to the corner, with my custom made up pattern.  The pattern met at the corner perfectly.  Required zero adjustments.

And going from the deck to back to the stairs by the gazebo, I was worried because it needed to line up in front of the stairs - but I just started at the deck, and figured I'd monkey with the back when I got there.  Didn't do any monkeying.  I didn't need to.

It lined up and fit perfectly, not even the slightest fraction of an inch off.  I count it as evidence Heavenly Father loves me, and knows my limits, and fills in when I've done all I can.  Tender mercies.  I had to learn to cut pavers for some of the odd pieces - but since I'm storing my brother-in-law's tools for him, not a problem.  Angle grinder with a masonry disk?  Check.  Done and done!

And more pictures to follow from pretty much every possible angle:

The base decoration on the pergola posts is just some of the pathway stones laid on their side and glued together with concrete construction adhesive - the redwood part I fashioned from leftovers from the arbor purlins.  And yes, I know the pergola purlins are crooked - they aren't attached yet!

View from inside the gazebo:

Close ups of the gazebo:

I added a birdhouse looking like a mini gazebo on the top for a final touch.  And solar lights on the outside, and furniture on the inside, and a candle chandelier.

And a close up of the arbor:

The "arbor" really ended up being a small pergola, that's what happens when you build something with no plans, and let it evolve as it goes.  But I still call it an arbor, even if it is a little big for that.  And those cross boards perpendicular to the beams aren't just for decoration - they held up the 16 foot beams so that I could install them myself!  And I did not cement those posts into the ground.  Found these great spikes about a week after doing the pergola posts.  If I remember correctly they go about 30 inches into the ground, and provide a base to screw your post into.  All I know is I didn't have the upper body strength to hammer in the last six inches or so, had to call in the male reserves for the final push.

Hammock close up (Catzilla photo bombing):

At some point someone pointed out that all my patio/yard furniture moves, rocks, glides, or swings, etc.  Haha, until I got the park bench for the arbor, that was correct!  I guess I'm a fan of motion.  And I looked at hammock stands for ages.  Large unwieldy things - the tree straps ended up working out perfectly instead!

View from under the arbor:

 From the other corner of the yard:

The BBQ was courtesy of my dad.  My second niece was born a few days before my aunt and uncle came to visit (in the middle of my backyard project - I had just finished the deck), and I told my dad there's no way my sister would want to take a newborn out to a restaurant, but if he wanted to buy me a BBQ we could eat dinner at my place.  Haha, he said yes!  That thing has been well used since then!

Close up of the planter box by the back window:

The fountain I also found on clearance.  Someday my dream yard will have a real waterfall.  This money pit is not my dream house.  But this will do for now.  The kiddos poured bubbles in it during Bubba's third birthday party.  Haha, that thing was frothy for months!

And view from the back door:

And that is my backyard... mostly done.  Still need to attach the purlins on the pergola (but they haven't blown off yet!), and do some sort of overhang on the roof eave extensions.  And add some more pieces to the drip sprinkler system and get a fire pit.  But I keep changing my mind on what kind of fire pit I want.  And the continuous upkeep does take a bit of time!

I've been asked where my favorite place to sit is when I go out in the yard.  Haha, I don't sit.  I do maintenance.  I mostly just look at the yard from the house, like it's a painting.  But I do intend to change that in the coming year.  Need to spend more time in the hammock reading, or staring at the trees.  But to pick a favorite place, it would probably be the gazebo.  I still love it - and it has romantic potential...

After my break during 2012 (had to let the tendonitis in my right arm heal from pushing myself too hard on the backyard), my house goal for 2013 - the front porch & yard.  But first I have to decide if I'm going to add a second bathroom onto the house in the front.  I so wish that I could do it myself, but I'm pretty sure the city would frown on that since I don't have a contractors license.  And it would be difficult to pour a foundation, alter the roof line, and do the wall framing all by me onesies.  So since I don't really know anything about building codes, I'll have to get quotes, and pay somebody else if I really decide to do it.

Meanwhile, I can't do the front yard yet, since there's no point in landscaping if it's just going to be destroyed by construction.  And honestly, I don't care as much about appearances as I probably should.  I kinda like that the front yard is totally awful.  It lowers the expectations for the back!  Haha.  Besides, I know it's fantastic on the inside, so who cares what anyone else thinks?  But the front is getting pretty horrid, even for me, and the plumbers didn't do it any favors by digging it up last year for the sewer pipe replacement.

Anyway, I had some friends over for a BBQ who had been looking at buying a house, and they said they'd passed up many a horrible backyard that looked much better than mine originally did.  Said they were inspired by my transformation of it.  Well, good luck to them if they decide to take on their own monstrosity!

I thought of my backyard when I read this quote from Thomas Edison:
"Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

Lol, I don't have overalls, but I certainly know about work!

All told, the backyard took about a year and a half - from the point of no return, to the mostly final product.  Then it was a year before I finally remembered to take the "after" pics.

The Backyard - Green Magic

So, I did have friends and family helping me out occasionally along this yard process, and I'm very grateful for all their help.  But it was mostly my solo project.  The only things I hired out were the breaking up of the original patio, and the installation of sprinklers and sod (oh yeah, and the trimming of the big tree in the center of the yard).  I actually do want to know how to install my own sprinkler system, but I was under a time crunch and didn't have time for the learning curve.  I am fully considering installing my own sprinklers in the front yard when I finally get to it, we shall see...

It was July 2011 when the sod magic happened.  After a couple days of the poor workers digging trenches for the sprinklers through my rock hard clay.  Seriously, the dude said he had never seen any harder soil before!

Before:

Drumroll please..... tadum - After!

Amazing the difference a day makes!  Who knew that a few rolls of grass could make the place actually start looking like a real yard, yay!!

The Backyard - Painstaking Progress

Blogging about all this yard work is making me tired!  Hmm, let's try less typing, more pics!

Cleared out the concrete from the old patio.  Note the extended roof overhang (was just plywood with no roofing material on it, totally rotting), got rid of that March 2011.  The potholes are from digging out cemented in metal posts.

And garden wall tetris continued, with the planters around the yard done, and a little patio from the broken cement under the swing.  The swing I fell in love with at the store and bought full retail.  Totally worth it.

Finished walls on the left

More posts, and where I started digging back yard to have more flat ground

That tree branch used to be dragging on ground, I kept trimming it back

Entire branch was eventually cut off by trimmers - it was split at the top

And here's a better look at the swing, and my vegetable garden on the left.  In all my healthy eating, I still don't eat many vegetables, blech, bitter green things, but I do like growing them.  Love the smell of tomato plants.  I remember being a little teeny kid and coloring during General Conference when President Spencer W. Kimball said members should plant a garden.  For some reason that always stuck with me.  But he never said you had to eat what you grew, haha.  My friends and family who actually like to eat veggies get to reap the benefits of my garden.

This was a happy bonus.  Found one of my favorite flowers growing out of the gravel pile!  Loved it!  Quite the hardy lily. Nice to have some spontaneous beauty in the midst of all the hard work.

One day in the middle of working, I thought it was suddenly a good idea to go inside and search Craigslist for a gazebo (I now credit it as inspiration).  And found one posted for free!  Sans roof.  But there was no contact info, so I clicked the button saying no info, and then kept checking back.  The next day it was updated and I emailed him - and out of all the requests he picked me to give it to!  Talked my friend in to bringing her van and we went up and got it from So San Francisco.  It came apart in eight sections, but that's where I learned that my old drill was finally completely toasted.  Very embarrassing, couldn't help the dude much with take down.  Oh well if he thought I was a useless girl.  He was however impressed with the van tetris in getting all the pieces packed in!

And so the gazebo sat in my garage for a few months, until I finally got a patio built in the back corner to put it on.  What of?  You guessed it, more of the old patio chunks!  Amazing how one 20x30 foot patio could spread so far!  Here's my miracle free gazebo!  And putting it back together did warrant the purchase of a new cordless drill.  Best birthday present ever!  Liked it so much I bought a second one for Christmas!

Yay Gazebo!

I dug the yard back as far as I could before hitting massive tree roots, and then added another planter box and place for a fruit tree (dwarf bartlett pear) in the middle of the yard.  The trees on the left by the fence are lemon, orange, fruit salad (multi fruit), and Granny Smith apple by the gazebo.

Massive tainted dirt pile (concrete chunk laden)

There are more walls & fruit trees planted by the back fence

And the gravel pile in the back!

It was finally time to get rid off all that nasty dirt and gravel (with some included extra trash from the former occupants), and lots of little concrete chunks still hanging around.  What better time to take care of it than Thanksgiving 2010!  Already had time off, and no big deal to run a few wheelbarrows full of dirt out in between my dinner making, right?  Worked off the calories of that dinner pretty quick anyway.  And brother-in-law was kind enough to do many loads of his own.  And Bubba was a super helper, as always!

Once all the extra yucky dirt was gone, it was time to get serious about leveling the yard.  I think I've moved enough dirt around to last a lifetime.  Every time I was shoveling it around I'd think this was the last time, and then I'd find some new occasion to move more of it.  Argh.  Funny thing is I've had many people ask me how I leveled the yard, um... shovel?!  Haha, they think it's crazy I did it "by hand."  Doesn't seem that big a deal to me.

Anyway, Spring brought some fruit on those trees, and mulch made them look much better!

Apricot, plum & nectarine tree

Apricots, needing to be thinned!

Future blackberries

A note about the thornless blackberry plants - first off, who ever developed the thornless variety - genius!  But every winter they die back and I think about ripping them out and replanting.  But so far every spring they come back with a vengeance!  I guess that makes sense.  My dad spent years trying to kill the blackberry bushes at our house when I was little.  But those were the mean thorned kind.

Another fruit salad tree, cherry tree, and tangerine

Spring 2011 also meant it was time to build the deck.  How did I learn how to do all these things?  Well, I taught myself how to read at the age of four.  And if you can read, and you possess common sense, you can pretty much teach yourself how to do anything (assuming someone else has written directions).  And with the invention of the internet, and the Google, it grants me instant access to a wealth of knowledge - I can search and scan numerous how to sites in just a few short minutes. 

Notes on the deck construction: I read many "right" ways to do the foundation for the deck, and then just ended up doing it my way.  Sorta jerry-rigging, or mickey-mousing it as the bro-in-law would say.  I know, I know, I should have poured concrete footings, dug below the frost line, put up level lines, etc, etc.  But here's the thing,  I couldn't do that ALONE, and it would take a massive lot of prep work.  I hate prep work, and I was feeling more than my usual independence at the time, and I rarely ask people for help.  Wanted to do it myself.

Besides, in California (barring some crazy weather shift), we don't really have a frost line.  It doesn't freeze here.  And I didn't intend to attach the deck to the house anyway.  So what foundation could I do alone?  Haul massive amounts of concrete bricks from Home Depot for makeshift footings, tons of them, lots more than you would ever need if they were proper footings.  So that's what I did.

I did get help the day I put the main part of the frame together, that would have been pretty tough to do solo.  And once the frame was on top of my "footings," I re-leveled all the supports.  Sure, they shift over time and weather, but there are so many of them under the deck that it hasn't been a problem.  I dug down the area for the deck to put in the supports, and then filled it back in with the last of the gravel pile for drainage.  And I did hammer in some iron posts in strategic places to discourage it from shifting.

My dad helped me sift through wood at the store for the 60+ deck boards I needed.  Which we loaded in my fantastically practical, trusty Aztek.  Crazy the amount of stuff I've hauled in it.  I decided to use screws on the deck boards, not nails, knew I'd have to be pulling up boards later for the landscapers to connect sprinklers.  Turns out I also had to remove boards for the plumbers when they re-piped the drains.  Haha, got the same response from both - super surprise when I pulled out the boards for them.  "You removed the boards yourself?"  Yep.  No problem dude.  I built it.

Anyway, two drills, one with the drill bit, one with the screwdriver bit.  Genius plan.  And I read you could use your car jack to force bent boards into straightness - it totally worked!

The deck pics are from a bit later, when I was preparing to finally stain it, so half of it is sanded.  Did it by hand with a 5in orbital sander.  That was fun, probably still have sawdust in my pores.  Also bought my first retail concrete wall blocks (the old patio pieces had to run out at some point), to build the curved retaining wall around the tree, and a rectangle planter box by the deck.  Bubba thought it was her personal dirt box!  She got hosed off one time after playing in it and totally herself coated in mud!

Bossy Bubba!

And more improvements came along slowly.  Finally devised a roof for that gazebo.  Bought some redwood fence boards, calculated the angle for the edges and cut all the pieces to make an open slatted look.  Not totally rain proof, but it's close enough.  And those red flowered plants were spontaneously growing in the other side of the yard, I just relocated them.  Someone told me it's ginger... I have no idea.  I think they are pretty, and any plants (not weeds) that I didn't have to pick out, pay for, and plant are welcome.  But they do obscure my nice garden clock I found on clearance!

You can also see part of the steps I built to go from the level part up to the gazebo.

And to the right, the beginnings of the pergola over the deck.  After dumping the rotting overhang, I cut back the extended eaves, and attached the beams to those extensions.

The posts for the pergola?  Holes dug deep and cemented in, the old fashioned way.  I said to my dad as he helped me hold them, "I'd better not live in this house long enough to be digging these out!"  Haha, I think I've done more than my fair share of digging things out of this yard.  Posts, concrete, garbage, old roof tiles, bones, beads, toys, I should have started a game show - what did I dig up in the yard today!

Anyway, yay for progress!