BrittanyMakes

Here is our back yard. Our back yard at it’s original state, I should say. Is it even fair to call it a yard? There are better terms that could describe this space: waste land, dirt pit, the place where dreams go to die. This wasn’t our favorite spot in our house and I’m sure you can see why.

I feel like I’m always saying this when it comes to the projects we take on, but honestly, we weren’t originally intending to remodel our back yard. We thought remodeling our backyard was a ‘3-5 year out’ kind of thing. But then we were itching to just “get an idea” of how much it would cost us, so that we could, you know, “save for it”. But then we start talking about it, envisioning it, drawing out different ideas of what we could do where and how, and what we could do to cut back so we could afford it ALL. It became somewhat attainable, so we went for it.

Before I begin, I want to emphasize the fact we aren’t made of money. Everything we’ve done so far to our house has been in the spirit of ‘getting the best bang for our buck’. My husband and I are finance people, we budget then research, tweak budget and do more research until we’re satisfied that we’re a) getting everything we want, within reason and b) not forfeiting our kid’s college savings fund to make that happen. With that discipline, were able to pick and choose certain things in the backyard that satisfied our wants and desires, and honestly probably made it look like we spent double, if not triple, what we actually spent.

We had a few needs & concerns with the backyard that we prioritized before initiating work:

1. Grading – the yard isn’t level, it takes a hard slope downward towards the right back corner. We needed to grade the yard without creating water drainage issues, or upsetting our neighbors
2. Drought tolerant landscape – we live in California and we’re in a severe drought which means mandated brown lawns. Our curb appeal is awful but this drought thing is serious business, so we needed landscape that is drought tolerant but adds some visual appeal
3. Dog area – we needed to section off an area for our pups to “do their business”
4. Low maintenance – My husband and I work 40-50 hours a week each, excluding commuting time which is an additional 3 hours a day. The last thing we want to do when we get home is prune bushes and mow the lawn.  We happily pay a landscaper to do this for us twice a month. I am all about paying for services that make you a happier, less stressed person, and landscaping is one of them! But! We’re also frugal and the added cost of landscaping a huge lawn in our back yard isn’t something we wanted to deal with. And a mandated brown lawn at that. So, we needed to find a better, low maintenance option.
5. A fun place to hang out! Our backyard is so huge, I think it’s double the square footage of our house. We needed a space to entertain since our house is on the smaller side.

So, we called up a trusted landscaper (he’s more of a hardscape guy, come to find out) and scheduled a time for him to check out our backyard. We talked, measured, drew lines in the dirt, all to help get an idea of placement and design.

Here are the main design aspects we wanted:

• Modern aesthetic
• Ample seating
• Bocce court (it does double duty! I’ll explain in a sec)
• Fire pit
• Dog area
• BBQ station

Here’s what I drew up for our contractor. Gotta love good ol’ graph paper and colored pencil! But seriously, someone please teach me how to do this digitally (Sketchup? Autocad?). Thanks!

I created a Pinterest page specifically for backyard inspo, I incorporated a lot of my favorite elements into the design (floating slat bench seating, modern concrete foundation, drought tolerant landscape). Here are a few that were most influential to my design:

1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11/12

We broke ground on the backyard just 3 weeks before my son’s 1st birthday party. We may have cut it a little too close! Next, I’ll go into more detail on how we addressed our needs & concerns with our final layout. And progress pics, of course.