It's Great To Be Home

It’s A Jungle Out There

September 29, 2009 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 8 Comments

Even though I love the idea of flower beds, my husband and I have proved that we should never be entrusted with them. You see, I have an embarrassing secret – our backyard has turned into a jungle.

So here’s how it’s going to go – I’m going to give you a slew of excuses and explanations for the sad state of our backyard and then I’m going to show you the shameful pictures – and you’re not going to judge me. Mmkay, got a deal?

I realized our backyard had gotten out of control when I found myself admiring the lovely dappled light coming in the frosted window in our bathroom. You see, there shouldn’t have been any dappled light because there shouldn’t be any trees outside our bathroom window. This is how that little area of the backyard looked in April (back when we laid some sod):

And here’s how it looked last weekend:

Another area went from this:

to this:

Yeah. There are no words for the disaster that our backyard had become. It’s embarrassing. Who knew our backyard could go back to nature in just a few months? (But in our defense, this area is around the side of the house where we never look. See? I promised you excuses!).

Anyway, last Friday and Saturday we decided to take the first step toward ridding ourselves of this ridiculous eyesore by tearing up the jungle, along with all the random pieces of cement and edging that were sprinkled around. The plan is to replace the flower beds with sod (which we can handle). The area along the house went from this:

to this:

And those jungle-y areas now look a little something like this:

I know, we still have a long way to go before it’s remotely acceptable, but we made some serious progress – hallelujah! You can take a look at all of the jungle debris as proof of our progress:

And the concrete pavers in the pile below were quite a hot commodity – about half of them were gone from the curb after just a few minutes!

We’re hoping to complete the transformation next weekend, so fingers crossed that we get our acts together and make that happen. What about you guys? Are you as appalled by our backyard as I am? Tackle any big projects over the weekend?

P.S. You may have noticed that there’s no Inspiration Tuesday blog party today – I hope that hasn’t thrown you off! There just didn’t seem to be as much interest as I’d hoped, so it’s been retired for awhile – maybe it’ll make a comeback someday! In the meantime, you are still more than welcome to link to your inspiring posts in the Comments section – just be sure to put your link in “quotes” so that it will show up!

Our Flip: Taking The Pool From Gross To Grand

August 26, 2009 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 6 Comments

As you all know, the pool at our flip was the area of the house that made us the most nervous when we bought it back in June:

It was filled with algae from years of neglect, the tile was dingy and dated, the entire backyard was taken up with cracked concrete decking, and the landscaping was a total joke. It was a total nail-biter – could we pull this off? Could we really turn it into a backyard that a family would love?

Well, you all know now that we not only managed to get the pool situation under control, but we turned it into a highlight of the house:

Here’s a behind the scenes look at how we did it, from the funky beginning to the awesome end. Here we go!!

We knew that this pool was going to need a serious makeover if it was going to live up to the rest of the house. I’m talking new plaster, tile, coping – the works! But before we could get started on all the fun stuff, the pool had to be completely drained. Here’s what it looked like:

Ew, right? And let me tell you, all that nasty algae was stinky. Super stinky. I don’t know why I didn’t expect that, but I was totally surprised. Luckily, the stinkiness didn’t last too long. Once the pool was totally drained and cleaned, a new surface of fancy 3M quartz plaster was applied. We were going for a tropical feel, so we opted for a colored plaster rather than the traditional white plaster – the plaster is slightly tinted blue, so the water looks all ocean-y and gorgeous.

Once the new plaster went up, it was time for the tile!!! A crew of guys stood on these funky little metal risers all day and applied sheet after sheet of earthy-toned mosaic tiles:

The people at the tile place kept trying to convince us to choose those tiles that you always see in pools – 6 x 6 tiles in bright blue. Those are really pretty, but we wanted something different, something a little fun. I drove around for about a week with a box full of tile samples in my car, asking everyone that rode in my car which tiles they liked best – kind of like a fashion show for tile. In the end, we decided on these and I am beyond thrilled with how they came out!

While all the plastering and tiling was going on, the huge expanse of concrete decking was also being broken up with a jackhammer and removed. We agonized forever over what to do with the decking – it took up almost the entire yard so there was virtually no grass or anywhere for kids or pets to play. It was also cracked and pretty unsightly. We ultimately decided to just get rid of it and put in a lawn – that way the new homeowners would have a true yard in addition to a pool, and we imaged that the pool would look really cool surrounded by grass, almost like a pond.

I do not envy the people that got the job of jackhammering up the decking. The concrete was about 6 inches thick, and reinforced with steel rebar – it was a huge job!!

After all the decking was hauled away, it was time for the new flagstone coping. Since we had removed the decking, we went for coping that is wider than standard so that the edge of the pool would look more substantial. We also asked for the flagstone to be chiseled in an irregular pattern so that the edges would look more natural. We love the way it turned out!!

The new cedar pergola went up in a flash while another crew was working on the pool – it’s a huge improvement over the old plastic sheeting that used to shade the patio. Even though we hated to cut down a tree, we ultimately had no choice but to remove the sculpted tree and bushes right by the pergola – they were totally blocking access to the stairs in the pool!

Now that all the decking was gone, we needed to spread oodles of dirt across the entire backyard to raise the ground level to match up with the edge of the pool. It was a huge endeavor undertaken by Landscaper Jared, and you can get the full scoop about that fun project right here.

After the dirt was added and about a zillion pieces of sod were laid, it was time for the fun part – landscaping!!!

I dished the dirt (literally) about how we turned the landscaping into a tropical paradise here, and you can get the 411 about all the plants we chose right here.

One of the last touches that we added to the landscaping was about 20 bags of black mulch – I think the people at Lowe’s thought we were crazy when we were loading up the truck:

We added mulch to the planting beds for a few reasons: (1) mulch would help reduce the number of weeds that grew in the beds (thereby reducing the amount of weeding that we would have to do), (2) mulch helps the plants’ roots retain water to get through the Texas heat, and (3) mulch makes the beds look awesome!!!

While any old mulch will help out your plants, black mulch is totally my favorite color of mulch because the vibrant colors of the plants really pop against the black background. However, you will be covered from head to toe in black mulch dirt, and your fingernails definitely will not thank you.

One of the final things that was completed in the backyard was the tiling of the patio – I told you all about the transformation here. I am head over heels for the result!!

Our finishing touch was to add flagstone stepping stones from the patio to the pool. Not only does it look pretty, but it prevents people from tracking grass into the pool – gotta love form and function!!

So there you have it – the entire tale of how the pool at the flip went from an eyesore that no one would dare to swim in to an inviting tropical paradise that just begs for you to jump right in.

We love to spend a hot afternoon floating around in this pool – there’s no better way to beat the heat! How about you guys? Now that summer is drawing to an end, what will you miss most about those lazy days of summer? Or are you ready to bid the heat adieu and bring on the fall?

Our Flip: Raise The Flag

July 21, 2009 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 13 Comments

While I’m totally smitten with the tropical backyard at the flip, I’ve also fallen in love with this awesome flagstone patio that we added right off the back door.

Let me start from the very beginning (which, according to Julie Andrews, is a very good place to start).

A few weeks ago when we first bought the flip, the patio was frightening:

I don’t know which was scarier – the blue outdoor carpeting, the green plastic roofing, the dark and dingy screens, or the confining peach brick wall? Take your pick. Clearly, it all had to go.

Once demo was complete, we were left with this worn concrete pad with remnants of the adhesive from the blue outdoor carpet – not too pretty to look at.

We considered our options. If we stained it, we’d have to grind down the concrete to get rid of the adhesive, and that still wouldn’t fix the few cracks in the slab. Same thing for painting. Stamping the concrete would be too expensive, and wasn’t really the look we were going for. That left tiling the concrete pad – but how expensive would that be?

Our first bid that we got from our tile guy was high – like sky-high. We were in a panic, what were we going to do to make the patio live up to the rest of the backyard? My hubby instantly went into bargain-hunter mode – it’s one of his strong suits. After a day of phone calls, he got a bid for less than a 1/4 of our tile guy’s original bid – score!!!!

But before the tiling extravaganza could begin, we needed some tile! We headed off to this place, which is the same stone yard where we bought the Austin stone for our fab fireplace:

Look at all of the goodies!!! We cute right to the chase and headed over towards the Oklahoma flagstone – we wanted to use the same stone for the patio as we did for the coping on the pool so that the pool and patio would look totally cohesive.

Do you think we found enough stone??

We stuck our name on this ton of 1 inch thick flagstone. 1 inch flag is perfect for tiling over an existing concrete pad – any thicker and it’s difficult to work with. However, you wouldn’t want to lay these thin babies straight on the ground without the support of concrete as flagstone is brittle and could break.

The next day, my lovely hubby borrowed a truck and brought this ton of precious cargo back to the flip:

Soon after, our new tile guy was picking the perfect stones and laying them out for a dry fit:

A few hours and buckets of thinset later, our patio looked like this!!

We ran off to Home Depot to buy 8 bags of Polyblend sanded grout in Fawn – the perfect match for the pool coping. Here’s the patio all grouted and gorgeous:

A few days later, we wetted down the patio and got to scrubbing with a long-handled broom – this was to remove the fine layer of grout that dried on top of the flagstone.