New backyard

After our bathroom renovations we both said we’d never ever renovate again.

Unfortunately that’s not how home ownership works. You have to renovate occasionally to keep the property in a good state, and after all it’s nice to live in a place that’s well maintained and makes you happy. Never underestimate the effect it can have on your mood to wake up in a place you love.

So we decided to take on the backyard. This time we didn’t rely on one single recommendation for a professional trades person, we consulted No Cowboys instead. We chose the builder with the most positive reviews and the most impressive pictures of his work. That’s a big lesson learned from the bathroom renovations: one good project can be pure luck, but a large number of happy customers is almost a guarantee for success. Sure, things could still go wrong, but it’s less likely. This time we were lucky and loved our builder through every step of the project.

Here’s what our backyard used to look like:

Ugly pseudo-deck.

Not very happiness-inducing.

There was a small step onto a pseudo-deck from both the back door and the bedroom sliding door. Then there were ugly concrete tiles (originally yellow and red, but the colour was faded), half a retaining wall and solid naked clay.

But now it’s all pretty!

A proper deck, on level with the house. No more steps walking out the door, just pure indoor/outdoor flow, no more cement retaining wall but a pretty wooden one.

A proper deck!

View from the back door.

Every morning I open the curtains in the bedroom and our backyard makes me smile. Now I just need to get some plants sorted (especially where you can see the coffee bags acting as weed mats in the top left corner in the bottom picture) and by next year it will be perfect, yay!