This post is a long time coming. I have been documenting our backyard renovation since we moved in. We found this home on the last day of a house hunting trip. I was already on an uber back to my house in Nebraska when Alex stopped by this neighborhood after church. He loved it so much and called me to FaceTime to see it and the rest is history. I loved the backyard so much. It’s a small footprint but it has two large oak trees and it lends itself really well for entertaining.
The backyard was really overgrown and needed some love. The previous owners didn’t have small kids so they barely spent any time out there. We needed to clear it out to make room for all the running and playing that we had planned.
As most renovations go, we started in phases. Here’s our backyard update phase 1 details.
And if you can’t wait to see the finished product – here’s a sneak peek!
Here’s our listing images:
The owners planted beautiful hydrangeas throughout the yard that we relocated and between Alex and his dad, they removed all of the overgrown bushes. There were so many snakes hiding in those bushes, Alex had nightmares for days!
The entire yard was taken up by massive overgrown bushes that really gave us that space we needed. Alex’s dad took a machete to it and gave us that extra space we were looking for.
They also trimmed a few tree limbs and hauled all of those overgrown bushes you see in the back. I thought they were so pretty but later I found out they were poisonous to kids and pets. So that’s that.
I would say all of that above was phase one. It took us (ahem Alex) a couple of moths to clear everything out before we moved on to phase two. The kids were happy to be able to use the space and get their small trampoline up without any snakes around.
Phase two looked a bit different. We wanted to extend the grill area and have a little more walking space. The problem that we ran into later on is that once we decided to redo the entire back patio, they had to completely tear up this section that Alex worked so hard on. It was sad but we ended up using this area quite a bit.
The second phase of the yard also came with a new fence. The one we had was falling apart and it was really low. A six foot fence on a two story house wasn’t cutting it for us. Also our neighbor’s yard was elevated and looked right into our bedroom. A little privacy was necessary.
This was our phase one and two completed and we were so happy with it. After spending an entire year aback here, we realized that in order to make this space functional, we needed to extend the walking/playing space.
It took a bit of planning to figure out how we’d get rid of all the angles as well as go around the trees. We ended up extending the concrete towards the fence and got as close to the tree as possible, knowing that we’d eventually want to plant something around the trees.
I can’t help but smile when I see these images. They were taken a bit ago and all of my roses, fiddle and hydrangeas have gotten so big and healthy.
We cleared everything out in a matter of 4 days, we had a new back porch.
We learned a lot during this process, one of which is that they use a powder to stain the wet concrete. It thought this was neat and it was certainly mesmerizing.
My idea was to just plant roses around the oak trees. Alex had a genius idea of making massive flower boxes. We used treated pine planks and with a handsaw cut them at a diagonal on the ends creating a finished box look.
The stain is the same stain that we used on the fence. The entire space really came to life with all of the stain wood elements.
Alex ran a sprinkler through the box and filled it with over 50 bags of sod and I quickly filled it with knockout roses and lavender and hit both boxes with fertilizer.
There’s so much to be said about knowing when to delegate/hire out and when to do something ourselves. I love how it all turned out. The next phase is furniture, lights and a bit more landscaping!
Tell me, did you like the backyard update phase 1 details? What are we missing? Any questions?
