Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Backyard Makeover

Here ya go mom and dad. A few pictures of the work we're doing in our backyard. We're wildlife-scaping it, making it friendly to birds and bees and deer. For those who don't know, we had the whole backyard torn up last year due to a problem with our septic system (we couldn't find it). So instead of resoding the whole yard, we decided to have some fun with it. Can you see the fawn in the first photo? That's right outside our back door.
Here's the initial framing, with pea gravel in place. Those are 4x6 pressure treated timbers, and they weigh about 50 pounds each. The pavers are 24x24 and weigh about 80 pounds each.
The patio is roughly 15x20 feet. We moved about 6 cubic yards of material into the patio (about 18 tons), and removed about the same in dirt. You can see the pile back there.
Here's the finished patio, trimmed out in redwood. That's a planter box with an aspen tree in it: we lost all the neighborhood aspen trees 2 years ago to some disease. I'm hoping the planter box will allow me to keep this one alive. You can see i've still got some work to do moving around the fill, which we are using to recontour the slope of the lawn so it drains away from the foundation. I hope to have everything done in time for college football season, when we start remodeling our basement.