Mmmm ... well yes, it has been a very long time since we posted.
It does however give you an indication of the lack of work that has been done around the house!! The few garden beds that I have worked on are now covered in weeds and it makes me sad everytime I look at it. The water feature is still not finished and of course ... still no pavers.
However ... this is all about to change.
This weekend I am on a gardening expedition to finish off as much as I possibly can, with the limited skills I have. It's so embarassing, almost 3 years on, that we STILL do not have everything finished.
As for the front garden .. don't even want to talk about it! That will be re-done when the paving has been done out the back.
Speaking of paving .... I'm selling my motorbike (poor Scarlett .. she was so lovely) so that I can buy pavers. That's not the only reason I'm selling mind you .... I have gone onto my full license so I now ride the CBR1000 (named Charlie) so there is no point having 3 bikes in the garage!!
Well ... I'm going to post the embarassing before photos ... and then hopefully some nicer 'after' photos following the weekend.
Wish me luck!!!!
Friday, January 15, 2010
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
No, we havent disappeared
Howdi,
J here Just letting you guys out there in cyberspace land that we havent disappeared or lost interest in the blog.
Im still over here in Adelaide, attempting to earn enough to pay the bills, A is back in melbourne still holding the fort.
So with all of this and the recent wet weather, we havent been able to make any further improvements to the aforementioned fort, so therefore no blog entries.
But stay tuned :)
J
Monday, May 25, 2009
Garden beds underway
Yesterday was a busy day in the backyard putting some of the garden beds in.
Unfortunately my brilliant maths mind was unable to calculate how much soil & mulch we needed so of course ..... I fell short!! D'oh. Due to Sarah's birthday completely wiping me out of cash, unfortunately I couldn't order more to finish. Oh well .. there's always next pay :-))
I would have been VERY happy if it was finished, but at this stage I'm just mildly pleased with how it is looking. EXACTLY as I wanted it to :-)
Unfortunately my brilliant maths mind was unable to calculate how much soil & mulch we needed so of course ..... I fell short!! D'oh. Due to Sarah's birthday completely wiping me out of cash, unfortunately I couldn't order more to finish. Oh well .. there's always next pay :-))
I would have been VERY happy if it was finished, but at this stage I'm just mildly pleased with how it is looking. EXACTLY as I wanted it to :-)
Monday, May 18, 2009
Sarah's birthday
Well a little bit of 'non house stuff'. Sarah turns 12 on the 23 May but we had a birthday celebration yesterday for her as she will be with her dad next weekend.
Saturday was shopping day and she was given a budget so that she could buy whatever she wanted. Twilight is the big 'thing' at the moment so you'll see by the pics below that a lot of things were Twilight related!!
Sunday was a low-key lunch with Poppy & Nana Liz, Aunty Min (Godmother) and the Ho (aka Kirstie). She's having a big birthday bash with her school friends next week so we didn't want to invite kids to 2 birthday parties. The day was a good one though and she seemed to enjoy herself.
Another year closer to becoming a teenager!! Yikes.
Sarah
Me and Kirstie (aka the Ho)
Sarah in her much beloved Twilight t-shirt
Aunty Min (my BF), Nana Liz (step mum) & Poppy (my dad)
Saturday was shopping day and she was given a budget so that she could buy whatever she wanted. Twilight is the big 'thing' at the moment so you'll see by the pics below that a lot of things were Twilight related!!
Sunday was a low-key lunch with Poppy & Nana Liz, Aunty Min (Godmother) and the Ho (aka Kirstie). She's having a big birthday bash with her school friends next week so we didn't want to invite kids to 2 birthday parties. The day was a good one though and she seemed to enjoy herself.
Another year closer to becoming a teenager!! Yikes.
Sarah 
Me and Kirstie (aka the Ho)
Sarah in her much beloved Twilight t-shirt
Aunty Min (my BF), Nana Liz (step mum) & Poppy (my dad)Friday, May 01, 2009
Paving ... harder than it looks on TV!
Well yesterday was a very productive day. The weather was absolutely beautiful so it was time to give these pavers a go. After this experience, all I can say is tradies are a god send (if we could afford one!!). Laying the pavers was easy ... it's getting the bed of sand perfectly flat that is the impossible task. We decided that when it comes time to do the main patio area, we will definitely hire somebody qualified to do it.
So our path is almost done .. we didn't quite get finished yesterday so hopefully John can finish today or tomorrow.
It's not perfect .. but neither are we. And I figure that when the water feature is done and garden beds are planted, you won't notice how wonky the paving is (let's hope not anyway).
Pics below to tell the story of the day.
Well I've done that bit ... now what will I do! 
Looking from the water feature
So our path is almost done .. we didn't quite get finished yesterday so hopefully John can finish today or tomorrow.
It's not perfect .. but neither are we. And I figure that when the water feature is done and garden beds are planted, you won't notice how wonky the paving is (let's hope not anyway).
Pics below to tell the story of the day.
Oh Mr Hart - what a mess!!
This sucks - why can't I pay a little man to do this!!!
Well I've done that bit ... now what will I do!
It's dodgy ... but it's ours. The larger area on the left sits outside the formal lounge.
The paving will be surrounded by plants and will be a a seating area.
Looking from the water feature
My only backyard plant! Magnolia Kay Parris - 2 flowers soon to bloom.
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 $$$ will play a big factor.
Anyway ... it's all going really well and looking just how we planned it. Very exciting!!
Forgot to take photos yesterday so will do so on the weekend.
I decided to 'work from home' (read: help John in the backyard) as he is in Tassie this weekend so we wanted to keep progress going.
We managed to get all of the road base layed for the path and then hired a compactor (we call it a wacker packer). We also took the opportunity to get the road base laid properly in path at the back of the house next to the grass.
The pond is also in... that was a pain in the *ss trying to get that level I can assure you. It's out of level by about 1-2mm but we figure nobody is really going to notice. I sure hope not anyway!
J's off to Tassie this afternoon so his jobs this morning are:
1. Bring sand in to make a bed for the pond to sit on
2. Attach sheets to the side of the pond
3. Sand join in feature wall
If this gets done I will hopefully be able to at least get the sealer on to the boards over the weekend (well, Sunday is going to be horrible weather so I'll aim for Saturday).
Then if all goes to plan, J will start laying the pavers next week.
Then it's just a matter of painting, bringing in some good soil and mulch and that will be all we can do for now until we save some more money. I've picked out the urn I want that will sit in the water feature and I know what plants I want as well. Ideally I'd like to have all this done by winter but $$$ 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.
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!
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!!
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