Yard Renovation #1

For the past two months I've put all of my spare time into redesigning part of our front yard. Here's what it looked like two months ago.

That front patio just had to go. My new thing is, that if it's not being used, then just get rid of it. It was ugly, I didn't use it and I was sick of pulling weeds from it to make it look nice for no reason. So one morning after my husband left for work. I just went for it.

We had a lot of things we were working on in the house, so when he got home and saw that I had started a new project his jaw was touching his toes, but I assured him that this was MY project and I would do it all while he was at work.

I never drew out any plans, (very professional, I know!) I just had my ideas in my head.

While I was laying my bricks out where I thought they should go, I decided that the planter in the middle of my yard needed to go, so that it wouldn't block my new creation. So out went that thing!

And we laid grass seed...

 that came in ever so slowly.

 

For a month we had a nice sand pit for my son to play in. ;o)

 I then started laying it all down with mortar. Before this project I couldn't lift all that much, but now I can lift 80lbs of mortar. Yeah baby!!!

Here was my first attempt. As you can see I didn't stager the bricks. I just didn't know that you had to, but now I do. It makes it stronger. If you have straight lines of just mortar it'll be very weak and could break very easily. I just had to learn this the hard way. This happened to me the day before mother's day and I spent the rest of that night taking apart my wall and scraping off all of the mortar from the bricks. Ugh!!!

 It did give me some time to just relax a bit and take in my beautiful view of the valley.

Under the patio was a few feet of just sand, so I transferred a lot of it to another part of our yard, where we actually would like a patio.

 

I just have to say that I never thought that I would have to haul a million loads of sand and dirt before. But it's a skill that I do possess now. Not sure if I should be proud of that or not. Oh well!

 

I then laid grass seed all right here so it would come right up to the first planter, where I would have my flowers.

Over on this end I had to dig out a stone, so my husband could get a sprinkler hooked up in there. I don't do sprinklers. That's my husbands job, but now that I've done all of this, I'm pretty sure I could handle that too. ;o)

 Wouldn't recommend doing this kind of stuff in flip flops, but I just can't bring myself to wear anything else.

 Here you can see the grass coming in.

Then I had to take care of the drain, so it wouldn't just collect right here at the corner of my planter. I got a bindable draining pipe that has little slits in it and drilled that onto the end of the water spout. High enough so no dirt will get in it.

And then I ran it along the side of the house with a subtle down grade, so the water will carry all through the planter.

And capped the end.

Filled it with dirt from my back yard, where we're going to put in a fire pit and patio.

Then added flowers, plants and a cute little window box and I couldn't be more happy with the results. 

 

 

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