We’re sort of outdoorsy people.
We’re the “hike for a million hours to get to the bottom of a mountain that we then get to spend a million hours climbing up, and then climb down, and then another 0.5 million hours hiking down” sort of people.
And then we had kids and we (I, mostly I…the husband still does the previous) became the “open the backdoor and walk outside and sit in a lawn chair in the sun gazing at our backyard surroundings whilst drinking a glass of wine and ignoring the children”.
All the ugliness in it’s “Before” state
So, it goes without saying that when we left Denver to move to Grand Rapids, Michigan we needed to have an outdoor area we could enjoy and relax in.
There were a few requirements for backyard space:
Yard…like with grass (seems like a gimme, but there are a lot of “yards” with just landscaping and no grass…and it seems like a waste to have all the rain and snow we have here and not have a yard to get watered for free) (I like free stuff)
Patio area for entertaining (bonus if it’s a pretty sweet design)
SUN. This probably should’ve been number one. Coming from Denver, land of sunshine 300 days a year, we knew the lack of sunshine would be one of the hardest things about moving to Grand Rapids.
Pretty & enjoyable. You can have the previous 3 things and have it be quite ugly, but since this was now going to quite possibly be the only outdoor experience my mom self got for a while, it needed to be pretty.
Above was the backyard and patio when we bought the house. It could be worse, for sure. I don’t even have pictures of the one side of the yard that was covered in shrubbery and sloped down into the neighbors yard and was basically unusable
We got our yard. Eventually…Check out the below pics of the yard we had for a YEAR. With a white dog. (Insert crying face emoji)…
We did some extensive yard work…(by WE, I mean the people we hired- my husband would’ve loved an opportunity to buy some of that yard equipment, but it wasn’t really in the budget).
We built a retaining wall on one side of the yard and pushed a ton of dirt into it to level the yard, enlarging our yard by about a third. (YAY!)
We had to build a tree well for the one tree over there so the dirt didn’t kill it.
Since our area is clay and has some water issues, and we are below our neighbors house, we also ‘tiled’ the lawn with a drain pipe that empties into the back corner of the yard to protect against future water issues.
Patio: We tore out the existing, cracked patio and poured concrete blocks on two sides of the house, connecting both of the exterior back doors.
I went back and forth on what to plant between the pavers…but that’s another blogpost
Sun: On one side of the house, there were a bunch of cedar trees right next to the house, blocking all the light into the house and sort of hanging over the roof. It made the house itself incredibly more dark, plus took up another large portion of a potential yard.
We cut down that whole row of trees, immediately bringing more sunshine into our house, enlarging the yard, and making the yard a more sunny place.
Pretty & Enjoyable: Once the grass actually grew (which we had to have re-seeded the following year, because it wasn’t done right the first time), it wasn’t hard to call this pretty and enjoyable.
And there it is- a quick overview on how to turn your backyard into an amazing spot to hang out. Coming soon we’ll post about what this costs to have it done when you can’t DIY the whole excavate earth and build a structurally sound retaining wall.