Our DIY Backyard Project… Seven Years In The Making (So Far)

 

We’ve been working on our backyard ever since we moved in 7 years ago.  We initially put in a lot of hard work… was fine with that…

until we weren’t…

and then we changed it up all over again!

This is what it first looked like when we moved in.

Pretty nice… except the yard had some muddy spots and held water really bad… very sloshy and muddy in spots after it rained.  When you have indoor dogs… that’s not good!

Our first attempt at fixing the muddy problem was adding portage stone pavers and a stone retaining wall for part of our sloping yard…

and then reseeding the yard.

(My hubby can build a beautiful wall!)

In order to have the stone go from one side of the yard to the other… I had to space them apart to stretch them out… leaving huge gaps between the stone that I filled with gravel and sand.

Then… we decided to open up our deck and add stairs all the way around it.

 

Not bad… and we were happy with it for a few years…

BUT…

Unfortunately… after all this work… and over that few years…

their was flooding and mud below the steps and it became a huge problem, the stairs eventually warped (looked awful) and the stones ended up with tons of dirt and weeds between them and on top of them… which made them look bad.  It took a lot of maintenance to keep them clean.

And the trees didn’t help either… very shady and moist… perfect for mildew build up on the porch and pavors.

We eventually had the trees removed… and that beautiful big tree in the photo… had a huge hole all the way through the center… yikes!  Glad we got it out of there before it ever fell!

We finally realized that the drainage system was getting worse over the years and causing a lot of our flooding/muddy/mildew problem… aside from our sloping yard.

SOOoooooo…

we decided to pull the pavers up, pull up the old drainage system and lay new pvc pipe last year.  And yes… we did this ourselves!  Pulled up the stone and started digging.  Very hard work as we had to route it all the way to the side of our house and to the road… lots of digging… in the middle of a humid summer… ugh!

 

But… “we got ‘er done”!

Then… we turned our attention to the deck…

we decided to build a new extension and make it slightly bigger.

(a friend of mine built the deck for us and I helped with the railing)

As for the portage stone… 

We had pulled most of it up for the new drainage and so I pulled all of it up and decided to lay it the way it was meant to be.

As you can see… we also added a fire pit area.

It’s been lots of hard work and sweat… (lots of icing the back) but totally worth it in the end.

We are still currently adding finishing touches… like painting the deck, etc.

I will show the “finished” project (ahem)… well… hopefully this summer! 

Thanks For Stopping By!

Click Here for the reveal… part two