Thursday, April 23, 2009

Is that a light at the end of the tunnel I see?

Yesterday was officially 'Wacker Packer Wednesday' at our house.

I decided to 'work from home' (read: help John in the backyard) as he is in Tassie this weekend so we wanted to keep progress going.

We managed to get all of the road base layed for the path and then hired a compactor (we call it a wacker packer). We also took the opportunity to get the road base laid properly in path at the back of the house next to the grass.

The pond is also in... that was a pain in the *ss trying to get that level I can assure you. It's out of level by about 1-2mm but we figure nobody is really going to notice. I sure hope not anyway!

J's off to Tassie this afternoon so his jobs this morning are:

1. Bring sand in to make a bed for the pond to sit on
2. Attach sheets to the side of the pond
3. Sand join in feature wall

If this gets done I will hopefully be able to at least get the sealer on to the boards over the weekend (well, Sunday is going to be horrible weather so I'll aim for Saturday).

Then if all goes to plan, J will start laying the pavers next week.

Then it's just a matter of painting, bringing in some good soil and mulch and that will be all we can do for now until we save some more money. I've picked out the urn I want that will sit in the water feature and I know what plants I want as well. Ideally I'd like to have all this done by winter but $$$ will play a big factor.

Anyway ... it's all going really well and looking just how we planned it. Very exciting!!

Forgot to take photos yesterday so will do so on the weekend.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Our own Backyard Blitz

It seems that Backyard Blitz has come to Lyndhurst.



Unfortunately not the TV show but our own little "non-handy-man" version of it!!

We were going to commence works on Tuesday (following Easter) however given that the weather was too perfect we decided that a bike ride was far more important.

So the real work began on Wednesday. A few trips to Mitre 10 and Bunnings throughout the week to pick up wood, nails, screws, woops ... wrong nails, go back and get the right ones ... you get the picture ... has resulted in some great progress.

The backyard looks a bit like a bomb site (you'll see below) but it really is starting to come together.

We were actually waiting on a couple of things to be delivered before we could move into the backyard so a lot of the work was done in the shed. The poor bikes copped a beating of sawdust on day 1 & 2 but the result is a pretty sturdy frame for the pond insert. John did a great job of the frame and you'll see over the next few posts how it all comes together.

By the way .. the pond isn't actually going to be a pond .. it will be a water feature.

The pavers arrived on Friday morning (woo hoo) and I am really really happy with them. They are perfect for what I wanted. Frickin' heavy though!!! They are 20kgs each paver and I moved about 1400kgs of them into the backyard. Boy was I in a world of pain that night!


These 2 pics show the mess that is currently our backyard although the dogs are loving having lots of new things to smell every day. They certainly enjoyed us being outside for the week.






Yesterday we headed to Bunnings to get some sample pots for the screen and the water feature sides. This is the bit I like ..... seeing some colour! We had originally decided that we would have a red feature wall behind the water feature however I think I'm going to go for this plum colour. Kind of hard to see but it's a lovely deep plum and then the walls of the pond will be the green (as you can see below). We went with green on the sides because we already have a green screen in the BBQ area (you can see that screen in the photo above).


Zach wouldn't get out of the way for the pic below so you can just see the top of his head!


For those that have been following our blog for a while you will know that J & I tend to have some ripper discussion/arguments when doing stuff in the backyard .... generally we can laugh about them after. You'll be pleased to know that there was only one major meltdown .... quite good I think!!
Stay tuned for more pics!!