The Oasis!

Our backyard is done, minus a few hostas and some decorations. It took longer than I thought--I was predicting that we'd be relaxing on our patio by the 4th of July. No such luck, which is a shame as the 4th of July was exceedingly beautiful this year. Alas, as I did predict, the yard is done just in time for a horrendous heatwave.

The heat, it kills the grass. Have I mentioned how much I despise grass? It hates me back. Actually, in the pictures it looks a bit better than it does today--it wasn't as hot two days ago and the weeds in the middle of the yard have grown like 6 inches this week (not actually an exaggeration, because you can't see them in the pictures).

Next to the deck is a tumbled paver patio.  It is pretty big--roughly 15x20.  We have a 6-seat rectangle table that will probably sit down there, plus the grill and smoker.  And there may be room left over for a low seating set with a firepit (TBP -- to be purchased).  Along the wall on the right side of the picture, I need to find some large pots or something to soften the edge of the foundation and blankness of the siding. 

Around the concrete drain are six good-sized Rose of Sharon.  There are rocks around there too--I apparently grabbed a photo pre-rocks.  If you can't hide the darned thing, make a pedestal out of it.  With the brick edging, the rocks, and the bushes, it is crying out for a Grecian Urn or a birdbath or something.  I'm not actually kidding on that (though I'm pretty sure that a 3-5 foot statue would be heavy and expensive)..


The landscaper also added rocks under the deck, and a nice border of shrubs around the base of it to soften things.  Along the back of the yard are five good-sized white pine trees with clumps of the tall decorative grass between (they are almost visible in the shot of the patio...bad light in the evenings when I'm trying to snap photos).  They aren't a wall, but do distract the eye from the street beyond it.  And they will get bigger as time goes on.  The tree line doesn't completely cover the back border, because if you look toward the other corner, there's a lovely view of a lake and open greenspace. We want to emphasize the nice view and downplay the road.

Finally, the part that's not visible is all the drainage work.  The long straight line of dirt leading toward the concrete pedestal is where they buried a drain pipe that comes off a downspout and the sump pump.  Previously, those outlets left a swamp on the side of the house (and made the sump pump work overtime).  They ran the drains that were in between the patio and deck out underground as well. A swath through the middle of the yard has been smoothed to remove a rut formed by water runoff. The back of the yard behind the trees used to look jagged, as though the builder had pushed dirt back there and just stopped (which is probably exactly what they did). It now has a nice rounded shape that looks intentional and a fresh layer of grass seed that we can maintain easier than the weeds that we had before.

Our inground sprinkler system has been repaired and activated, and I might relent and have a lawncare company spray stuff on the grass to make it green (I'm tempted to just buy spray paint...do you think the neighbors would notice?)  I have finally come to realize that we are going to have to fertilize the grass to make it grow, as our dirt is more gravel than soil.  And it's way too expensive to just pave the whole yard.

Deck Done

The deck is finished. It looks great. Next up (possibly as soon as this week): yard digging shall commence.

I'm hoping my husband and I can heft the grill up to the deck tonight to actually grill in our back yard instead of our driveway out front. I'm sure the neighbors will appreciate the effort as well ;)

The only issue with the deck process involved the stairs.  There is quite a drop between the house and where the stairs land, so our landscaper had to come out to figure out at what level the patio will rest.  The first attempt at the stairs ended about 18" from ground level, which would have meant some sort of retaining wall around that corner of the patio.  They re-did the stairs, and the patio will be a bit lower than where the dirt currently meets the house.

Also, once the big muddy process is done, perhaps we will actually fertilize our yard and do some weed control. It looks...kinda bad. But it isn't worth spending money on the back right now because a large stretch will be removed when the grading is fixed.

It Starts

The splintery stairs are gone!  In their place, we have the beginnings of framing for the new deck, plus holes where the footings will be poured. I believe an inspector must OK the holes before the concrete is added.

I was surprised to see that the deck is only attached to the house in two small areas--both about 2 feet wide, on either side of the breakfast bay.  The deck will not be attached to the bay itself, likely because there is no foundation directly below it.  We now have two small (1ft x 2ft) pieces of cut away vinyl siding.

Also, as we are still home recuperating from surgery, T-man got a front-row seat for the building process. He is loving getting to observe the process.

Looking at the house from the back, the area to the right of the deck towards the second bay window is where the stairs and paver patio will go.  In the picture it doesm't look that tall, but the end of the deck is a good 4 1/2 feet off the ground, so there will be about 6 steps down to ground level.

The deck is not that large. At its depest, it will be about 12 feet, but from the kitchen door probably more like 9.  Deep enough for either one of our patio tables (our smaller round one is hanging out in one of the side shots, the bigger rectangle one is in the garage where it's been stored since we moved), or else a different seating group.

I have been window shopping patio furniture ideas, but want to wait and see the finished spaces before buying anything new.  We already have the two tables, though the round one would need new chairs. The old ones are the cheap plastic, two of which moved with us to the old house, and are neither attractive nor comfortable (though they may live on for extra temporary seats in case we have a big party).  The round table is wrought iron and while it wasn't expensive, seems to be holding up great. I can get matching chairs from any of several stores, just waiting for someplace to put them. Our bigger rectangle table needs a fresh coat of paint, but I still love the floral weave pattern that it and its chairs have. Ideally we will keep both, because together we can seat ten people for an outdoor dinner, or have extra buffet or prep space.

I also love the idea of low chairs around a fire pit, but that would probably have to sit down on the patio rather than up on a wood deck. Without fire, we could use the deck for a conversation area instead. I'm also not sure we can trust kiddos near fire, but they aren't babies. So it all just depends on how our existing furniture fits, what furniture we find, and how much we have left to spend after we're done paying for our landscaping adventure.

The Before Pictures

We have a plan!

Well, we have two plans. One for a low deck, another for a patio.  Plus trees, and fixes to drainage problems.  I'm kind of in denial about the final cost involved. It's going to be fine. Quite pretty, actually.  I think I had visions of a relatively inexpensive concrete patio (or of laying our own pavers). The reality is...not so inexpensive. Tumbled stone pavers. A composite deck with metal railing.  Watching nice strong men do all the digging. The reality will also fit the house better than concrete.

Now it's time for the deep breath. 

And even more patience.  Because it's likely to be two or more weeks before anything else is started, while the contractors work out permits and scheduling.  And it will probably be early-to-mid-June before both the patio and the deck are fully in and usable.  I'm kinda hopeful for the patio by Mother's Day. Once that is in, we can relocate the grill and our primary table and chairs from the garage. (I suspect July's housework will include re-organizing the garage and maybe assembling some shelves to replace the giant metal table that has been holding garage junk since we moved in....).

Before I forgot, I snapped some "before" pictures.  Here is a close-up of our temporary stairs, and a shot of the full back of the house.  There will be a small deck where the bump-out in the middle is, and the patio will go across the right-side of the house near the other bay window.

In case you can't appreciate the ugliness of the stairs, the hand-rail on the left hand side is actually two pieces of wood butt-joined together. They are sturdy, but land directly on the grass and the hand rails are a bit splintery. We didn't pay the builder anything extra for them, either, so I can't complain that they are made of scrap lumber.

Had we gone with just a patio, those wooden stairs would have been changed for solid stone or else decking. They would definitely have been a focal point, which is not what I wanted.  I don't have a good side-ways shot to show the depth of the bump-out where the kitchen is.  That bump-out plus the stairs take up about 10-12 feet from the rest of the house (those stairs jutt out about 6 feet from the house).

This won't be the last time I freak out a bit about the cost of the landscaping.  And I'm already wondering if we can go an entire month without eating out (and grilling instead) in order to make me feel better about the cost (and of course, to ensure I bond really well with the outdoor living space) :)

Project Backyard - Take 3

Being impatient, busy, and picky is not a good combination.

In round 2 of our patio/yard planning adventure, we had a very nice and seemingly very knowledgeable landscape designer come and draw a plan and give an estimate.  His plans for fixing drainage in the yard, for the plantings, and even somewhat for the patio itself.  But of course, there’s a catch.

Our yard has a couple of design challenges, and so far neither of the two contractors we’ve talked to have (in my opinion) adequately addressed one of those.  Our breakfast room is in the middle of the back of our house, and bumps back into the yard, with an additional bay-window-shaped bump. The glass door (currently a slider, though I’d like to swap it for a French door) is in the middle of the bay.  The threshold of the sliding door sits about 40” above the grass level.  That’s too high for a simple step or two down to a ground-level patio.  Our current, temporary, wood staircase required 5 steps down to the grass, and juts about 5-feet into the yard (remember that the whole breakfast room already juts into the yard).

In short, because of how our breakfast room sits on the back of the house, the stairs out of it to the yard cut the yard in two.  

The stamped-concrete contractor suggested we have a nicer set of decking steps built.  We could choose composite for the stairs, handrails that were vinyl or pvc (and these days those come in several colors that would coordinate nicely with the house). Great, except that what we end up with, looking down from above, is basically a 6ftx6ft square out of the middle of a section of patio that is approximately 12x12 (there would be another larger section of patio where we could actually put the table and grill). That’s a lot of concrete whose sole purpose seems to be making a focal point out of stairs, since the space around the stairs is too narrow to actually put furniture on.

The garden landscape designer basically suggested the same thing, except that he proposed to build the stairs themselves out of paver stones to match the proposed paver patio. So his 6ftx6ft chunk out of the middle of the 12x12 patio would be solid stone. And his way would leave this strange little 3 foot high by 3 foot wide by 7 foot long crawl tunnel under the bay window itself. (I'm sure the kids would be thrilled, but it's going to look silly from the side)

*sigh* With both guys, I told them that I hate the stairs and that I want something else. I didn’t mean just a different material. I don’t want to spend my money buying stairs and concrete for under the stairs. I want to actually sit there or grill there or have it look pretty. Patio with stairs taking up the middle doesn’t accomplish any of those objectives.

If we stick to the patio idea, the best option for "something else" is to make the patio in two levels. The higher level would be 2-3 steps down from the breakfast room, and would require building-up the space with fill dirt and a retaining wall. It would then step down 1-2 more steps to a lower patio off the side. Stairs would still be required, but would be split up, smaller, nothing quite so huge and dramatic and did-I-mention-huge. But building up a retaining wall and laying a patio on it is even more expensive than building giant stone monolithic stairs, and would trade the crawl-tunnel for a 4-5 foot ledge that the kids can jump off of (see, the door is 40" from ground level, but the yard slopes away from the house).  

On to plan C.  This time, a deck designer. If I’m going to give up a chunk out of the middle of our yard, I want it to be useful. I'm thinking a 12x12 deck off the breakfast room, with stairs off one side down to the patio (rather than toward the middle of the yard, further severing it in two).  The stairs would only need to be 36 or 48 inches wide, not 72, and that 12x12 foot space in the middle of the yard become seating area instead of a shrine to the stairs.

Then we call the garden landscaper back to re-work the stone patio at ground level (about 2/3 of the original patio, with no stairs), plus the rest of the grading, drainage, and trees that he proposed.  I am probably being overly optimistic that this will be the final iteration of our landscape design.

What I would really love at this point is for one of those tv shows to come in and make me a new yard in two days. The whole thing, start-to-finish, concept-to-bbq-party. Every communication with a contractor takes a full week—one week from initial contact to when they show up at your house, another week before you get a quote back, another week before they come back to discuss revising the plan. Maybe it would go faster if I didn’t work every day. But then, we wouldn’t be able to afford to pay for anything.

I should have started in January, and called everyone in the phone book at once. Maybe then we would have  hada nice yard in time for spring.  Because right now, I'm not sure we will get this pulled together before Memorial Day.

Patio - Step 2

Almost two weeks ago, we had a contractor give us a quote on a stamped concrete patio. I had called that company in part because their website advertised that they did both concrete and paver work. I love the look of paver patios, but I've seen nice-looking stamped concrete also, and I know the concrete is less expensive. Alas, the actualy company rep said that they were no longer doing the pavers. The quote on the concrete work, however, was fast and reasonable, and I am confident that they would produce a nice-looking space.

But, we need more than just a patio. We need help with drainage and trees and visual screening from the road and updates to our sprinkler system to support all of the above. Last night, a landscape designer from a local nursery came. That was fun. Way too much fun.

We walked around the yard, and he frequently pointed out problem areas that we want addressed before we could get to them--the bad runoff from our sump pump, the trench in the grass where uphill runoff pools instead of runs, the big concrete square catch basin where all that runoff is supposed to go (it's an eyesore), the ragged back edge of the raised side of our yard (there's a bit of a stream back there, so we want a big berm-like structure to stay, but what we've got looks half-finished). You could watch the options flitting through his mind.

His company does paver work, so the hardscape portion of his design will reflect that. He's also talking trees and boulders and fixing the drainage issues, and said that they work with the irrigation companies on the sprinkler systems. He will be coming back early next week to measure and sketch and will be presenting us with a nice color design. He also was respectful of potential budget limits (though we aren't exactly sure what our budget limit really is, and are probably willing to stretch it a fair amount for a comprehensive design). He easily talked through things in "phases" and mentioned options (i.e build the patio vs build patio with seating walls vs patio w/walls w/columns, opting for smaller trees or more mature ones depending on price, etc).

Interestingly, he never mentioned the word "fence". Given that our lot sits between a straight-line fence that borders the neighborhood, the next neighborhood's bordering fence, and our next-door neighbor's fence, ours almost looks like it is missing a few sections. And while I quite like a fence (clear limits are good for defining where we can put our stuff and where the kids can play), my husband shudders at the thought of a fence. (I don't quite understand why, but his immediate family shares the aversion...). Anyway, the f-word never came up, but various trees and boulders and knockout-roses all did. Maybe we shall get a nice plan that both defines our lot's limits and yet doesn't contain a row of metal pickets.

The process just got fun. I know it will get ugly when we have to start forking over real cash. And uglier when our yard turns into a dirtbowl more while they work. Then ugly again as we dig our pretty patio table out from a year's worth of accumulated junk in the garage (and probably have to stop and clean the garage). But I am feeling hopeful.

Project Backyard: The Beginning

Our house came with almost no landscaping. We have grass. A poorly done (and half-finished looking) raised garden bed on the front of the house.  A set of temporary stairs to get out of breakfast room and into the back  yard. There is a sprinkler system that has served to keep the grass alive, though one of the sprinkler heads was placed below the afore-mentioned breakfast room sliding door and therefore waters our temporary stairs as much as it waters as the yard. 

We did add a bunch of “trees” last year. By “tree” I mean “twig with roots”, most of which we lost to some combination of drought, excess water (ironically, from poor drainage around where the sump pump empties), and our lawn service’s mowers.  Guys on commercial mowers don’t recognize six-inch twigs as landscape features unless they are surrounded them with large patches of mulch or edging. Yes, we paid for mowers and not for trees—mowers were cheaper.

We have exactly  two trees that are bigger than a foot tall, and both are more bush-sized than tree size. Neither are in the front of the house. The raised garden bed and another small patch of yard between the driveway and the front steps both have some perennials, including irises that were divided from ones we grew at the old house (which in turn came from my mother-in-law’s garden in Iowa).  So the yard is not completely bare.

It is time for some landscape work. Actually, it’s way past time for some landscape work, but we finally have the financial resources to attempt something.

First up: the back yard. The temporary stairs need to go.  I would really like to move our patio table out of the garage (where it has been collecting random boxes of junk). I would like to grill in the backyard rather than the driveway. I’m sure our neighbors will appreciate that as well.

We don’t have a good idea what we want in the yard. Just a vague idea that it should look “nice” and “in keeping with the house”. We need trees. We need some privacy screening along one side of the house for noise and headlights from the nearby road. We need a place to sit, and a place to grill. We want to keep a large grassy area available.  We are not planning a large swing-set (as one kid doesn’t care to swing and the other will outgrow it all too soon), but do have one smaller climber to install and want room for the kids to play. We have kicked around the idea of someday putting in a pool, though we aren’t sure and the kids aren’t old enough for that yet. We love the idea of an outdoor kitchen or a screen room or a fire pit or any number of other fancy features, but kind of want  to take things in phases and not overspend right away.

We do not have a walk-out basement, but the breakfast room door is about four feet above the grade of the yard, and it is smack in the middle of the back of the house.  That makes part of the design harder. We could go with a low deck, or steps down to a patio, or some combination thereof. We could build it toward the street-side of the house so that the entertaining space is closer to the road (with some traffic sounds) and runs behind the family room. Or we could build it towards the opposite side of the house, farther from traffic but right next to our master bedroom windows. 

We are incapable of doing this job ourselves. Though at least one friend has told us how easy laying a paver patio is, we have neither the time off work, the brute strength and/or tools to dig and level that much sod, nor the inclination to spend our vacation time digging. We are definitely hiring this out.

Last night, we took our first baby step towards figuring this mess out: we had a concrete contractor come for an estimate. They do stamped and stained concrete work, which is a slightly less expensive alternative to pavers. We also like the look of pavers, but a poured concrete patio with a brick-or-stone look is a definite option, especially if it leaves room in the budget for more of the trees and possibly some drainage work, or a few new pieces of patio furniture. And it would take less time—only about two days rather than a week or more.

I was disappointed that the contractor expected us to know exactly where and how big and what shape we wanted—I wanted more design guidance and he wanted to measure.  I had no quarrel with the price that he quoted: the price-per-square foot was within what I had seen online, and though he quoted a much larger area than I had anticipated using, the price was reasonable.  Oddly, he was busy talking us away from more expensive options.  One of my biggest pet peeves among salespeople is ones who attempt to down-sell us.  Frankly, I want someone to let us dream big, and show us where we can maximize value (or where we can split a big job into pieces that can be spread across a couple of years so we aren’t financing everything).

Next up: calling an actual landscape designer or two. We probably should have started there.