maknilsin
Making a Splash

Backyard makeover

PlanterBox.jpg

So as some of my fellow workshoppers will know - I built my first home in 2016 and moved in early February this year. 

 

It's modest block of land with a nice, affordable and maintainable 3 bedroom house on the block. Now being quite a small block the space provided for the backyard was never going to be incredibly ample, in fact it's rather small. 

 

So at the outset I was provided the below plans which highlighted the size of the backyard and the "landscaping" that would be provided. 

 

landscaping.PNG

So the plans themselves made the space look somewhat decent - however the reality of this is that the garden is about 12m x 2.5m with a 1m wide concrete path going around the perimeter of the home. 

 

It doesn't particuarly provide the greatest space for entertaining. And as you can see below the reality of this garden and the "landscaping" provided left a lot to the imagination. 

 

backyard-1.jpg

 

Even the view from the living room doesn't particuarly scream "Come out and enjoy the outdoors!"

 

backyard-2.jpg

 

So it came time to start planning a way to rejig this space and transform it into a liveable space that I would enjoy spending time. My other concern was purely budgetary. As I'm currently in this home on a single income any transformation that occurred would purely be done the old fashioned D.I.Y. way. As such a lot of my loftier ideas were quickly nixed and my expectations became a bit more measured. 

 

I do also have the access to a father who has built many a deck and pegola of his own in his time nad as a result my plans started to lean towards a nice decked area that wouldn't require a lot of maintenance and would transform the space into an entertaining space as an extension of the living room. 

 

 

landscape-plans.png

 

So the plan is to completely deck the backyard area and build up some nice large planter boxes to keep a bit of the green in the backyard and provide some bench seating of their own.

BIM_Engineer
Former Community Member

Re: Backyard Makeover

Nice to see a painted finished Retaining wall & Timber post & Rail fence project done properly
But what really excites me is the concrete skirt around the House... a must on reactive soils
Jason
Community Manager
Community Manager

Re: Backyard Makeover

 

Visitors to this popular discussion might be interested to see pictures of @maknilsin's completed deck here

 

This project has certainly been very popular with the Workshop community - over 7500 views to date.

 

 

Looking forward to your next update @maknilsin. Thanks again for sharing.

 

Jason

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Re: Backyard Makeover

Well after a severe lack of updates - it's time to update the wonderful Workshop community on the progress on my backyard makeover. I'm happy to report that we are finally tools down on the project! 

 

There are still a few little niggly jobs that I want to complete but what was once a meagre deck creation job has spanned into a 6 month project that transformed my backyard into my own personal beer garden. Some competing priorities at my sister's home renovation saw work on this project completed pretty sporadically.

 

So I think one of my previous updates, we had just started digging out the backyard and were levelling off the yard to start placing the joists. This was back in May....we most certainly didn't understand the extent of this task. 

 

Levelling off the deck took forever, no matter how close we got to thinking we were done we would discover we needed to take off more. The below illustrates the area we had to work with

 

IMG_0183.JPG

 

But once we got the space ready, we were able to crack on and start smashing through the creation of the deck. The joists were an utter joy to work with as we quickly realised how my entire block was hardly square. The project stalled significantly here, my old man I really wanted to make sure that the deck was perfectly level. So a lot of time and patience was spent on getting this right. 

 

But after many weeks and frayed tempers - the deck started taking shape and we could see the end in sight. 

 

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With the deck finally laid out and completed it was finally time to think about the final touches. We had used quite a lot of treated pine sleepers throughout the backyard to help frame the space and build the planter boxes on each side of the deck. I however thought that these slightly clashed with the new deck and were also glaringingly not square with the deck due to slope of the block. 

 

We had however estimated quite generously for this project and we had a lot of spare timber, so we set about cladding over every sleeper in the yard. I have to say I'm pretty happy with the result as it tied the whole space together nicely. 

 

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Melbourne Cup day was spent completing the cladding of the planter boxes. I foolishy requested that these boxes have some nice joinery, which easily added a days worth of work as two DIYers attempted to become carpenters. The result in pictures is fantastic, however up close some of our joins are less than ideal. I may come back to these planter boxes in the future, but for now I think the stain hides a lot of the imperfections.

 

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And then finally to finish off the deck, we spent this last weekend staining the deck. This took a bit longer than we were expecting - when staining of 40m2 of deck you expect it to take some time. But being in direct sun we were racing the clock to get everything done in the early morning, otherwise the stain was drying up almost instantly. So after two days, both coats are down and the deck/beer garden is looking fantastic! 

 

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Re: Backyard Makeover

Oh I should also add - there are a few minor jobs that are being completed this week. I'm heading out to choose some lemon and lime trees to suit my planter boxes and I'll be spending my evenings with a nice small brush staining the sides of each decking board. We discovered after it all dried that the lambswool wasn't doing much for the sides of the boards, so the perfectionist in me will spend some time meticulously going over each board.
mydreams
Just Starting Out

Re: Backyard Makeover

Hi @maknilsin

Congratulations on your results for hard work.

I am in similar position as you in terms of the small house lot of 300sqm.

I also want to do similar decking and small veggie patch. Do you have any idea how much cost in all you had in doing the backyard decking?

Any good guide to start learning how to do it.

BIM_Engineer
Former Community Member

Re: Backyard Makeover

@mydreams welcome to the forum
You might also want to check out

Low Level Deck @Harv has put some photos up

and he may be able to let you know what his project  cost

BTW there are a number of options to consider

  • DIY  deck
  • Do part of the work yourself and bringing in trades to complete
  • Having trades to complete the whole project while you organise the design and order the material yourself

Please upload photos or sketches if you require specific info...

which also help others 

 

 

 

Jason
Community Manager
Community Manager

Re: Backyard Makeover

Hi @mydreams,

 

Welcome to Workshop. It's fantastic to have you join us. I hope you find plenty of inspiration for your projects from our community members, as well as great information and advice. 

 

I'm sure @maknilsin will be happy to assist when he gets a chance. You might also find the How to build a deck series of D.I.Y. advice videos from Bunnings very useful. And as @BIM_Engineer recently posted, Chris is also very happy to assist if you would like to provide more information about your plans. You might like to start a new discussion and post as much detail as possible. 

 

Thanks again for joining the discussion.

 

Jason

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Re: Backyard Makeover

Hi @mydreams,

 

In terms of cost for this project as it was a fairly long project the costs weren't too impactful on any budgets. But at the end of the project I think we were shy of just $2k spent on the whole backyard. 

 

I also agree with @Jason that some of those Bunnings videos are a great first step in terms of learning how to do it yourself. As I mentioned in my post, I was incredibly fortunate to have my Dad helping out as his brain just works with these kind of projects so a lot of the thinking and planning came from his head. 

 

Hope that helps!

I do suggest sitting down and drawing out what you are planning to do as it was helpful to refer back to those very basic plans whenever we were trying to work something out and it gave us a clear goal to hit.

BIM_Engineer
Former Community Member

Re: Backyard Makeover

@maknilsinThanks for the project cost of $2K
I quickly estimated the deck materials at $2.2K using
This information on DIY Timber Deck , also taken out items I couldn't see in your photo.etc,etc
Just curious were you given total quote$ for supply, fix and how long it would take?..I would like to check my data, google sheets & app
Cheers

Re: Backyard Makeover

@BIM_Engineer - I didn't recieve any official quotes as this was a project done by my Dad and I. We literally measured up the backyard and worked out the materials required ourselves. If you're getting close to $2.2k as your estimate I'd say that's pretty close to what I ended up spending. $2k was a rough estimate from my memory as the original project costings have been lost to a notepad about 10 months back.

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