Thursday, November 12, 2009

Backyard Reno on the Thrift


My BF and I knew when we met that I would eventually move in with him into his modest bungelow. He himself had just purchased it mere months before I had met him. Being the house is small and grandbabies are in the future, we needed somewhere for BBQ's and kid fun. Anyhoo, the back yard was a great size and has a garage to work with and a huge elm tree. Great bones to work with. The not so good outweighed the good as follows: Here's the before pictures......


A veiw from the house of the missmash of felt paper and strange tin encassed insulation (was already removed when picture was taken) that only covered two walls do the garage.
Note the sparse grass (more like weeds).


Over the man door of the garage was a delapitaded awening and handrail that almout reached the fire pit seen above.


The worst of it all was the fence that must have been there forever and a day, crooked and all.

This is a veiw from the alley man gate and unknown use gate.

This is yet another gate, cuz you know how strong lattice is to keep dogs in and people out!
 -  A large cistern right outside the back entrance, the hot tub is on top of the hole.


Notice how you step out the door and run into tub, or you'd fall in the big hole.

This is the ugly garage car door.


This is the fence now, this view from the alley-one man gate which is open in this picture, and the garage door gate just slightly stands above the fence. Not that you can see it well in this picture, but note the garage car door! Big Differnce! What was so thrifty about this you ask? Well.......The fence posts....free, hole digger-free (BF laboured that is). The garage door was purchased at a box store ($300.00) and then we hired the local garage door specialist for only $150.00 to install within one hour versus, exactly the same brandname door from the specialists with install for.......are you ready......$900.00. How the #@$% can they do that? Oh well, all it takes is a little research and you too can save $.

Note the hot tub moved to the wall and no more cisterne to fall into.

New man door. The bench.....free. The siding we installed ourselves including new roof, just me and my BF.

So I'm not much of a green thumb but decided to keep the mini garden and just add my own junk. The bird bath was made with left over pole from the fence and a $2.50 farm impliment that I grabbed from the scrap yard. What you can't see is on the base of the bath is a fondue pot base that I painted black and the scroll detail makes it look like it a part of the pole. The finial on top is a fireplace tool handle that was found in the garage when we cleaned it out. The light globle is just sitting on a candle base all purchased at a thrift store I frequent.

Another view of the deck and tub. Harley (Boxer) loves to lie in the sun up there and peer in the kitchen window. The back of the garage all sided up. I just painted the window with salvaged paint to freshen it up. All the gravel that you see was moved from under the deck and over by the firepit by moi to make the dog kennel (beside garage by the flag pole), and to make our creekbed.

Ohhhhhhhhhhh the love of fresh sod....save money by picking it up yourself (if you have use of a truck of course) and installing it yourself (very easy to do) instant lawn to enjoy.

Another view of the elm tree and sod. Note the boarder of 3 River Slate ($1.61/lb), it goes all around sod line of the creek and around the tree. Valued at ($700.00), we only paid....$0.00. Yup, hauled it off a unbuildable lot after it sat there for 10ys or more. Yes it was work, put slab after slab in my little mini van and kept in the yard until we were ready. I probably moved it all about three times in the three months it took us to complete the renos. It took this long because we did it ourselves on weekends or days off work.

So this was the longest post ever, for this I am sorry; however, I love my back yard.....and I did it myself (BF too)!

Hope you enjoy!
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