A work in progress - backyard

I hope you can bear with me through this post, I think I had to include so many photos just to emphasize how big this project has been and how long it has taken!

Our backyard has been a work in progress, we started in January 2010 and my last update was the chook house in November 2010.

You can read about it here at the Chook House

It all started here you can read about it all at

"The beginning part 1, part 2 & part 3"

Then in November 2010 we started working on this area again.

We levelled it and we built retaining walls and we moved an awful lot of rock!

During the work we also installed the new sheds

read about it  

 here  and here 

you can see them in the background.

We worked hard and just in time for our Christmas Party on the 23rd December 2010 we left it at this.

 

In April 2011 my wonderful hubby started work on it again

We also decided it was time to finish the other unsightly areas that we had left around the place.

We had uneven surfaces around the new sheds, we had dirt around the side of the house, drain that still needed to be installed and messy areas that were just hard to mow and looked unattractive.

After much deliberation it was decided that the best way to fix this and avoid lots of back breaking digging was to use crushed limestone.

Is it really sad to get so excited about a finished path and an installed drain?

Hubby worked hard yesterday in the freezing cold and today just before it snowed to add some finishing touches

and were done....

except for all of the plants that need to get planted in spring and the lattice that needs to go in the veggie garden to support my climbing plants.......

 and I am sure there is still more......

but I was just too excited about our progress that I just had to share it with you.

What do you think?

I think that if you made it this far you deserve a big hug for being a great friend and sharing my excitement!

I may follow up with some more detailed explanations in the future including some really interesting stats like how many tonnes of rock, dirt and sand we have moved. LOL!!!

How much money above mentioned stuff has cost us and how much I have saved on gym fees by working hard in the yard! : )

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.