When we were house hunting, we really wanted a home with a yard. In this land of urban sprawl, that's harder to come by than you might think. Newer houses practically spoon each other! We knew we wanted space for our kids to run and play, space for a garden, and space to entertain. While it's not a massive amount, our house definitely has enough space for all those things. And that's all we wanted.
The problem is that we haven't used it the way we wanted to. Our back yard has looked approximately like this for the last two and a half years. (Cue embarrassing photo dump. I moved/cleaned/retouched nothing when taking these. Don't judge us too harshly.)
Let's start on the patio. It's big! It's covered! It's a disaster!
And yes, our Christmas tree is still out there. Our chest freezer needs a permanent home--maybe in the garage--and we need to get rid of all those empty boxes. The previous owners had a large dog (you may remember the stained carpet in the master bedroom?) so the walls are filthy where the beast rubbed up against them. There is one harsh light and that's it. Spiderwebs cover our windows and a hornet is building a nest on the sliding door to the master bedroom. I'm not proud of any of it. Looking from the house out to the yard isn't much prettier.
It's just a cheap builder's grade patio. Those pillars make me nervous, since the bottoms are starting to deteriorate. David doesn't like that we can see into our neighbor's house (and, he assumes, they can see into ours) so he tacked up those lovely blue things. And any time the ground gets wet, someone slips and falls. It needs work.
If you turn right from the patio you see this:
David still has some work to do, but it's already a happy place for the girls to play...if the neighbor's cat would stop pooping in it. We'll talk more about the sandbox another day. This is also where we put our original garden which did not end well. This corner is where we moved the garden, with a little more success.
The other corner on this side looks like this:
We feel pretty lucky to have that big shed to store yard maintenance equipment and all kinds of other things too. We also feel lucky to have a decent sprinkler system that only needed a few tweaks to be functional (and on a timer!) after we moved in. This patch of grass is where we put the kiddie pool in the summer and sprawl on a blanket to read in the spring. Before the sandbox, it was probably the most used bit of the yard.
Just for perspective, here are two more shots:
It's just not being used very well. AT ALL. We want to change that.
We've been looking at a lot in inspiration photos on Pinterest, taking measurements, and making, discussing, and revising plans to maximize all this space that we are so happy to have. We'll be sharing some of our ideas and our thought process with you soon. Until then, maybe you have some suggestions of your own.
What would you do with this wide, boring yard? Maybe more helpful, what do you have going on in your own yard and you're happy with? We'd love to get some outside opinions!
I am so excited to see all the changes. We're actually in the process of buying a house and if all goes well, our new backyard will definitely need some work. PS- Our Christmas tree is still sitting on our apartment patio. The dumpster is only a few feet away, but it hasn't manage to get that far yet.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it so hard to wrangle those things into dumpsters and out of our lives???
DeleteGood luck with the house buying! It's been an eventful year for you!
Jealous of your yard! Our garage is behind our house, and while that works great for Dallin to keep project cars back there and do manly things, it means our "yard" is mostly a concrete driveway and some scrubby bushes. One day we will have a grassy backyard for the chillens to play on... one day. Maybe.
ReplyDeleteAw, that's kind of a bummer. Feel free to come use ours any time!
DeleteI think you need some bubble lights, because personally that is my favorite thing about my backyard because BUBBLE LIGHTS. They make everything better.
ReplyDeleteA couple of real ideas, although you've probably thought of these already--have you thought about framing out the pillars? Not sure how sound they are structurally but that would take out the eyesore-at-the-bottom part if you just cover it up and give yourselves some nice depth. And then you could hang some long white blowy drapes between them if that's your thing (they'd look great with the bubble lights!).
How do you feel about swingsets/slides? Not the most aesthetically pleasing, perhaps, but boy oh boy do our kids get a lot of mileage out of ours. And I remember someone--maybe the Handmade Home--made the cutest kiddo hideaway. Pretty sure it was elevated and just adorable.
Have you thought about seating? That also makes a big difference in actually being able to relax and enjoy, say, your firepit. And I'm pretty sure you can paint over the concrete with something rough--maybe paint with sand mixed in?--to give it some traction.
Bottom line I would think really carefully about what you want your yard to do (entertain guests? entertain kids? grow plants for eating/looking pretty?) and then figure out how you will "zone" different sections of the yard to do that.
Not sure what your climate is like in terms of what it can handle, but I am also a big fan of planting things like fruit trees and berry bushes. And the best thing I ever did for our yard was to hire the Scott's guy to come zap all the weeds every month with his magical and very non-organic potions that have taken our lawn from scrubby weed-infested abandoned-home look (because it totally was empty for a couple of years before we bought it) to one of the lushest in the neighborhood. I had a real moral debate with myself over this because hello, organic garden and Scott's lawn? but the fourth time that one of my kids stepped on a bee (thanks to the giant patches of clover)/came in crying because they were cut by a weed, I called the Scott's dude and never looked back.
Pretty much all of this will be covered in subsequent posts because I promise we have asked ALL the questions and thought of a billion possibilities. Just wait.
DeleteBerries? HAHAHAHAHAHAno. Waaaay too high maintenance in our scorched patch of desert. But bubble lights? Big thumbs up.