Long weekend and a winner

We have a long weekend here in NSW for the Queen's Birthday so we are taking advantage of the extra day and we have been playing with concrete.

If you have been around for a while you will remember that just over two years ago we ripped up our back deck that used to look like this

Bit by bit we cleared and levelled other areas in our backyard and used the extra dirt and old pavers, etc to fill in the void below the old deck.

We worked and worked with lots of dirt and rubbish everywhere for weeks

We spent some time researching paving options and in the end decided to make our own using this plastic paving template and concrete. 

It was a much cheaper option and the result was just what we wanted.... rustic. 

We decided early on to go with a rustic and aged style that way any mistakes could be passed off as part of 'the look'

Finally it was all done, you can read more about it here. 

Over the the last two years some of the pavers sunk. We knew this would happen as the dirt underneath compacted further and we knew that the paving would need to be redone.

Fortunately not all of the paving has to be replaced just the area under the pergola where the deck used to be. 

So that is what we have been up to and what we are doing today. It isn't pleasant because it is so cold out there and really, I have no enthusiasm for this project considering we've already done it once before :-(

But it will be nice when it's finished.

Before I head out to brave the weather a big 'thanks'  for all of your lovely comments on my art work. 

It was a bit of fun and very easy to do. 

Tamarah from Shabby Vintage Junk is the lucky recipient of the set. 

Thanks Tamarah for your lovely encouragement I hope you enjoy the art.

I hope you all enjoy your Monday and I do hope you are doing something more pleasant than I am.

xx

Backyard - Part 3

I hope you all had a lovely weekend. We had beautiful weather so we spent Saturday morning cleaning the yard and then we headed off for an over night camping trip after lunch. I have never really liked camping but I had a really lovely time and enjoyed spending time with my boys. I can't wait to go again. I do think that one night is just the right amount of time for me though, Any longer and I don't think I would enjoy it quite as much. We after our clean up on Saturday I took some photos of where our backyard is up to now. Just to refresh your memory this is what the deck looked like before... After:

• Built up the garden retaining walls to be one height the whole length
• Built a courtyard outside our bedroom window
• We ripped up the old deck and all the old paving
• Hired a Dingo Mini Loader and levelled the whole area
• Built a retaining wall and steps
• Built a raised garden bed and water feature along the side fence
• Filled in the area with dirt and ensured that the area sloped away from the house
• Removed old shed and built two new sheds
• Moved the carport beside the house
• Replaced the hot water storage system with a wall mounted instant gas heater
• Made our own pavers using a mould and concrete
• Paved the area behind the sheds
• Installed drainage along the garden wall
• Rendered all of the brick work
• Painted the fences
• Planted garden beds, including hedging along the fences

Before: After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Still to do:

• Lots and lots unfortunately, the water feature above still needs to connected and attached properly including rendering the caps on top of the feature.
• Our path leading around the side of the house (including our little courtyard, pictured below) still needs drainage and paving.
• Our bedroom window will be replaced with french doors so we can walk out into our courtyard and enjoy morning coffee.

• The back veggie garden bed needs to be built up and new lattice placed across the whole back fence for climbing veggies
• The area with the black weed matting (pictured below) is to be paved using the old bricks stacked up in the foreground and a retaining wall will be built (and rendered) along three sides (the fence, the garden and the left hand side of the picture)
• Gazebo will be built over this courtyard

Still more to do includes:

• Replacing the existing pergola
• Rendering the whole house
• Painting all the gutters and trim on the house
• Putting lattice up in front of the sheds and around the water feature, growing a climbing plant like Chinese Star Jasmine
• Painting the chook house (old cubby), building a chicken run off the side and buying some chickens
• Moving the gates on the side of the house
• .... and lots more little things

We hope to finish a lot of this over the next year but at the moment home improvement has slowed right down due to Nick's work commitments and my lack of enthusiasm for digging!!!

Hope you all have a great week and thank you to everyone who visits and leaves comments, I really do appreciate all of the advice and encouragement! xx

Shed - Part Two

After our lovely, extra long weekend spent with our families it was time to get back to work. We took advantage of the Public Holiday on Monday and decided it was time to build some sheds. First thing was working out how it all went together. The instructions that came with the sheds made it really easy to put it all together. The most time consuming part was looking for the right pieces and then finding somewhere to put everything as we went. One shed up and time for lunch (a late lunch anyway). It was so exciting to see some progress. We are very happy with the quality of the shed and the cost. We bought the sheds on line from www.buyashed.com.au and had them delivered to the depot in town for free. As we traded (down graded.... a long way) our BMW for a snazzy truck (KIA Ceres) we were able to pick up the sheds from the depot and save money. We were going to replace the existing shed with one bigger shed 6m x 3m however when we looked at the space where we were going to place the shed we discovered that 3m was too wide to fit. In order to comply with our local council regulations the shed had to be a minimum of 900mm off the boundary/fence and we have an existing brick path in front of the other shed that we preferred not to move so we needed to find a shed less then 3m in depth. The best we could do in order to get the biggest shed for the space was to buy two and place them side by side. Each shed is 3m wide and 2.56m deep. Perfect! At the end of the day we had two sheds built and we were very pleased with the result. They line up and look nice and straight (we were a little bit concerned about our paving efforts). In the end we are happy with having two sheds as all of the gardening stuff and power tools can be locked up in one shed and all of the bikes, kids stuff etc in the other, that way children don't need to access the shed with all of the dangerous items. It is so good to have a project finished. We still have a long way to go though. The pile of pavers on the left hand side of the sheds is to pave the area behind the sheds in order for our bins and wood to get stockpiled. We ended up with a space 6m long and about 1.2m wide. We will keep the wood on the left side and construct a colour bond roof/covering (of some description) below the fence line so that we can stack the wood for our fire and it won't get wet. Behind the right shed we will hide all of our wheelie bins so that they are easy to access but out of sight. The pile of old bricks on the right of the sheds will be used to pave an area just below the vegetable garden. The area is about 5m x 5m and we will put a gazebo there to provide another sitting area. This is still a big job as we will need to build some more retaining walls around the area. This weekend we will hopefully begin paving our outdoor area immediately outside the back door. We used to have a deck that was rotting and we ripped it up, built retaining walls, filled it in, ripped up the existing paving (that sloped towards the house) and levelled the area. We extended the space and we will end up with 65m2 of paved outdoor entertaining. Still so much to do..... As promised this is where my Eiffel tower lives for now. It came with the cute little lights that I have left on it for now but I am not sure that they will stay for long.