Backyard Makeover, part 2

Well, slowly but surely, the yard is coming along.  It is so fun to see progress.  It has been so stinkin' hot here, that not too much work is getting done.  The boys have been going out to work in the yard once the afternoon sun is gone, so they don't have to bake out in the sun!

The rest of the frame for the deck is done, and we have managed to almost completely fill it with dirt from the side yard, one wheelbarrow at a time.  Dave would rototill, and the boys would fill and dump all the dirt into this corner deck area.  We also went and picked up a truckload of dirt from someone locally who was getting rid of dirt. Found the guy on Craigslist, and he even loaded it into our truck with a giant bucket tractor.  Nice.  Here is the almost completely filled deck.  And a dog added in for interest.  You can see the little gas line popping up out of the dirt right in the middle.

Dave lowered the level of the dirt down the side yard to prepare to lay a path with pavers.  I was able to score 300 square 12 X 12 gray pavers for FREE on Craigslist.  I just checked every day, and happened to find these just at the right time.  We took both our SUV and our truck, and loaded as many as we could fit!  SCORE!!!!!  I would recommend if you want to do any sort of project that you check Craiglist before buying new.  Even though we weren't ready for the pavers yet, if you can get stuff you need for free or extremely reduced cost, it is worth the time to check back daily for the things you may need.  I have also scored all the lava rock for our future fire pit for free.  So we just piled it up somewhere out of the way until we need it!

Ok, so back to the project.  We wanted to put a path down the middle of our sideyard, leaving the sides available for some plants later on.  So Dave ran some sprinkler pipe down the sideyard for me so water will be available in the future when we want to plant some things.

In order to create the path, we needed some way to define the path with edging.  I really wanted to use large landscaping rocks, but every time I checked Craigslist and found some, they were either too small or already taken.  Landscaping bricks are cheap, but we have such a long side yard, so it would have cost a couple hundred dollars just for the edging.  Nope.  They make some rubber type edging also, but again, gets costly. Dave is really good at thinking outside of the box, and he found some wood bendable edging stuff.  It comes in like 6 or 7 foot long strips, in a bundle of like 10 of them.  Cost :  $40.  That I can do!

Here is Dave beginning to lay out the shape of the walkway.

This path will go down the sideyard, and then veer off in two directions. It will meet the concrete by the house, and will also continue on to the deck.  Once the path is completely defined with the edging, we will begin laying the pavers down, and then fill with small variegated pea gravel.  I am still hoping to score the gravel free too.  If not, it's relatively cheap anyways!

Well, that's all for now!