Do you fancy a little update on my house renovation and a look at how things are going with fixing up the back garden?
I’ll be honest: progress has been a little slow, what with having a baby three months ago and breaking off to do work inside the house over winter. My husband started on the back garden last year, but he broke off to finish the hallway and do the nursery, which is close to being completed. I’m looking forward to showing you the baby’s room; it turned out nothing like the ideas I had in my head at the beginning of the year!
I’d love to be getting stuck in and helping him with these projects, but I’ve had to take a back seat over the last year because of being pregnant, and now looking after the baby. I’ve still been very involved in the design and planning though and I’m so pleased at how everything has come together. I’m never sure whether these ideas in my head will come off and look right in real life!
Here’s a reminder of how the back garden looked before. You can read more about our plans and some of the problems we’re having to overcome, and see more ugly photos in this post.
The next photos were taken after a few weeks’ work. You can see he’s done some of the clearing and built a retaining wall for the decking to sit on.
One of the major problems with the garden has been the varying levels – the plot our house is built on slopes significantly from front to back and left to right. I want a flat lawn so we’ll have a raised deck and patio areas, with steps leading down to the grass.
We decided to dig up the conifer trees that were around the border. They were in a pretty bad condition with all sorts of rubbish and weeds strewn behind and within them. We’ve opted for a fence instead, which is easier to maintain and maximises the space.
This is how the garden was looking on a sunny day in February.
So the fence is complete and now the decking is done: I gave you a glimpse in this life update post a few weeks ago.
We even have some plants and a bench so we can sit outside! This is something we’ve looked forward to for some time, having lived here for more than three years and never really been able to use the back garden.
There is still a lot of work to be done but it’s motivating to look back and see how far we’ve come already. Realistically – because we have a few holidays planned and want to spend at least some fine days doing things together as a family – it will be next spring/summer before it is finished.
At the moment he’s building a base for his new ‘man shed’ then after that he’ll start working on the patio area which will sit to the left of the decking.
Hopefully most of the building work will be done this year, then next year we will be laying grass and planting.
I would love to know what you think to what we’ve done so far.
Have you had to give your garden a makeover?
