Backyard Reno - Stage 3 of 3

Ok, this work was actually completed "some" time ago...it's just I haven't got around to posting the changes...so here are some shots made from the same positions...taken this afternoon...looking at what has changed.


The small retaining wall that was falling over was replaced with these two walls....we levelled off the backyard into a number of flat area's rather then the original slope...


The enclosed car port was knocked down and a open one replaced it...which makes the backyard more spacious, brings in more light and fresh air..


Looking up the back yard, we have the bottom section that has the trampoline. Louis and I stand this up on it's legs and play soccer/shots of goals in this area...or set up some stumps and play cricket. The next level has some lavender plants and a little walkway. Third level up is just a grass area that doesn't get much use...have thought of putting a deck there...but am leaving as is now...Above the third level is the deck to the pool and the pool it's self...in photos below



Another angle, where the original enclosed car port was, replaced with this open one...

Now, here are some photo's up on the pool deck..this is at the top of our block and over looks our backyard, and over all of the Illawarra.


This shot is looking North-West...I have painted around the pool, re-painted the deck, and also built a deck for the enclosed pool house....which you can't see here.


This shot is looking North-East...the flat horizon that is from the middle all the way to right is the ocean...we are a few km's due east of it...but most of our view is north-east, to north for the water.


Another shot from the back of the deck...looking at the Illawarra escarpment...

Backyard Reno - Stage 2 of 3

So, last post I talked about our plans for the backyard. Now I have some picture we took while the work was being done.

Below is what is left of the car port, hhmm, problem one, the main retaining wall that was acting as a fence and was going to be used as a sort of feature wall had to be knocked down :-( Turned out that when it was put up, they layed it on about 5mm of mortar, so, it was very unstable. Last thing I wanted was Louis or Cassie bumping it and the damn thing falling on them. So the guys walked behind it and pushed it over with absolutely no effort. So, I am so glad I told them to knock it down.


So, we have the car port walls out of the way, turned out we also pulled down the roof too. We could either pull the roof down, and then get the earthmoving done for half the price, or leave it up, and pay way more....quick calc on how much it would cost to put it back up, and yeah, pulled it down. Now we can see this is going to need a large amount of dirt moved...


So, we can see the guys marking out the areas that need to be excavated, in essence we want two retaining walls in, one to replace the existing "little" one in the background here. And another to replace where the car port was and to run right across the yard to meet up with the other side that is just below the granny flat.


We have the shovel here, taking out the two levels, worked out quite well. Only took Adam one day to do this work. He had this shovel and a truck. Parked the truck up where the car port is, and filled it there...Of course, seem with each little part of the project, something minor goes wrong. In this case, Adam had to remove the gates to get the truck up. But left the bolts in, and one on. So, the bolts got bent, one gate had a bit broken off it, and a brick on the support post was broken, oh well, beside that the job was great.


Picture from under the granny flat looking out to where the levels are being made. The retaining wall that runs up from the ground and then connects into the other will be removed in the end. This is to open up this area, so the kids have much more usable playing area.


Now, the excavation has been done, we have the two levels done, with a small cut made for where the stairs are going to go, right up against the granny flat there.


So, this is the first levels retaining wall going up...we now have the pipe work from the pool underground, rather then being exposed. But then the excavator ripped out the second level, the power lines running from the back of the house to the pool where cut...so David fixed that for us :-) David, as always has been a great help and sorted all of our electrical issues, and helped out when ever needed.


Now, as a side note to the work, this picture was taken on Beck's birthday....we had 20 people coming for a party and originally the work was meant to be finished. Bugger!!! Oh well, a ramp, some stakes and tape sorted that out. We had the party up the back on the Deck. But you can see where the stairs are going to go.


Now, a while later, we have the retaining walls done, the stairs in and Beck and the Kids did the centre garden. They moved 1 tonne or gold/yellow rocks up to the second level. I was in Brisbane for work, at that stage my Boss, Mark was on holidays and left me in charge of our development team. So, if you know Beck, she couldn't wait for me to get back so they did it.

What you see here is me moving some of the turf we bought to lay in the bottom section. This was after I moved 10 cubic metres of dirt...that was fun. Some of it had to be moved up to the top section, I must admit, I had a little help from the landscapers on that....otherwise it would have taken a week, rather then a day.


Here is looking up the back...you can see the stairs in, the two walls, the central garden section, has gold/yellow rocks as a base, stepping stones to walk along and then two rows of lavender. I have moved "some" of the dirt, and leveled/compressed it using a hand roller. Beck and I are about to lay the turf...only took us about 3 hours to lay it. We had to cut in the stepping stones that run between the back door and stairs. You might have noticed the de-roofed car port in the back there...well...we *thought* it was a good idea at the time to move it up there. As trying to get it down the driveway seemed too hard at the time. Ended up getting Mick and David to help with that later...


So, there are a few snaps over a month or so, of the landscaping work we had done in the back...next I will post some picture of the completed project. Car Port, lawns, central garden, view from the top, stairs that run up to the pool and what ever I have of the new yard.

Backyard Reno - Stage 1 of 3

So, we now have moved in and really settled down...we always bought the place with making some major changes as we go along.

Plan is to get the outside pool and yard sorted, then move onto the house...

We decided that the backyard needed a major overhaul...

Lets take a look at what we started with and then in the next Post, I will show some construction pictures, followed by the final result :-)

Below were the stairs leading up to the pool, they were old paver's. with copper logs as the front support. Few problems there...over the years the logs degrade and the paver's sink. They also become quite lose and are prone to falling out. I also should have took a picture before David (my cuz) and I put up the pool fence. Either way, the stairs are pretty poor.




So, this is pretty much looking from our backdoor up the yard. Our block is quite steep, the difference in elevation from the front to the back would be about 20metres. For example, the green deck up the back there, when you stand on that, you can actually look over the top of our house and see the mountains, runs from the bottom of Balgownie all the way towards Sydney (can see the lights at night). You can then look out over the local suburbs and then down to the ocean...

As you can see, there is a nice walkway that runs up the side, to the granny flat (now my office and where Beck does her sewing). To the right is a very old retaining wall, thats falling down, it's got the pool drainage pipe running over the top. Then there is a old shed, we did have some of the kids things in there, like bikes, toys, etc.


Now, this is to the left of the backdoor, looking across the yard. You see, our place is broken into two section, the main house, and then the granny flat out the back, this has been constructed in a raised manner, so, I am actually standing under my office :-)

What you can see is the gradual slope up the yard, a retaining wall and part of the car port. This again, is constructed of retaining walls and is dug into the ground.

Our plan is to remove the wall closest to us, and the back one, we can then keep the one that is acting as the fence and leave the car port up.




Here is a quick picture up the driveway into the car port, as I said above, we wanted to keep the right wall and knock down the back and left ones.







Final picture here, this is from the top of the path, looking down the backyard.
















Ok, now what are our plans for the yard:

• We want to replace the existing retaining wall,
• Level out the section that runs between the car port and the undercover area, as this will give more "play area" for the kids,
• Keep the main wall of the car port that is on the property boundary, we want to use this as a feature wall much later,
  
• Add a second retaining wall, this level will be used as a feature garden, something simple here. Beck wants some Lavender plants, a number of stepping stones and a central feature,
• Level off the section just below the pool deck,
• Build a central staircase where the existing path to the back is,
• Replace the existing stairs to the Pool Area, and
• Get rid of that old shed.
  

Backyard Reno - Pool

Well, one of the reasons we bought the new place was for the great view and the pool. Well, live and learn....

The pool is a very old fiber glass pool, and was losing it's gel coat, and had Black Spot which caused osmosis in it...All not good. When we bought the place, we new it's wasn't the best, but didn't expect to need to get it fixed so soon. So we got a couple of quote to get the pool fixed, man, costs a bundle. But it was needed. I have some picture once the pool was empty and had been sanded back..




and here are some after the 2nd coat of paint.




Once the third was on, it didn't seem to look as good as the second, overall the job has been done, but it could have been much better...What was meant to only take between 2 to 3 weeks, ended up taking 2-3 months...there seems to be a pattern here.

Bathrooms...

So, with all "new" houses, everyone likes to put their stamp on them. Well, we didn't have much choice when it came to our new place. The bathroom consisted of a vanity and a bath. Now, the vanity had only two of it's draws, and they broke when I opened them. It honesty looked like a rat lived in it.

The bath was ok, but you couldn't really turn the taps on, yay...But best of all NO TOILET!!!

So we spent the first couple of months using our outside bathroom. This was fun to say the least, me taking the kids to the outside bathroom during the middle of the night. Also, the wall, it had tiles falling off, some broken in half, holes straight through, nice, not!!!

So, we decided to put in a new bathroom, I did all the rip out work and then the tilling, floor and walls, that was fun, and NO, I am not available to help you title your place, I suck.

So, we added a new vanity, toilet, cabinet, floor titles, wall tiles, paint job, new lights and fan, new taps,shower, the lot.

So, some before pictures, (I took them after I pulled out the vanity, but the rest is AS IS)




And are here some after photo's

The Move, The New House

Well, we have a new house...we have been thinking about buying another place for some time now...we had made it rather difficult for ourselfs in what we wanted. At first we wanted one of those new show homes, but we had a few restrictions:

• Had to be a place in the same area (near Cassie's School),
  
• Need to have great views,
• Had a area I could us as a Home Office,
• Somewhere for Beck to work,
• Potential!!!

We originally wanted to find a block where we could build a show home, but there were none that were suitable in size or location, views etc. We then tried to find a place that was a knocker...we could knock it down and still have enough money to build...thats not going to happen where we were looking...so, we bought this place. One guess why.

Views!


More Views!


and some more!


Nice!


We got a 3 bedroom house, ok kitchen (bit small, more floor space, looked big at first) the bathroom was a joke..so I ripped it out and we have put in a new one. I will show some before and after photos later. It also has a Granny Flat. Have now set this up to have my office in it and Beck's sewing room and where she show's dresses. As you can see from the above pictures, it's got a pool and a great deck with some wicked views of the mountains and across the local suburbs and over to the sea. We have had a few lunchs and morning teas on the deck already. Can't wait until summer.

post more later

Shawn

Cassie's Birthday Party

Sorry all, I have been meaning to post some pictures from Cassie's birthday for some time...but you know how it is...So, here are some pictures and a few comments on the day's activities.


Here is Cassie out the back getting and opening her presents. We like to let the Kids open the presents as they get them from friends, everyone has fun then :-)


Grandma Annette with Cassie, as she opens another present.



Here is Louis in the backyard as all the kids have fun running around. It was a Disco party for about 25 kids....there were a few issues with that:

1. Cassie is a summer baby, so it doesn't get dark until 8pm and well, the party was over way before that...we had a disco ball and all....but that didn't work to well.
2. 25 KIDS!!! that was fun....RED CORDIAL...SUGAR....well, you can figure it out

Now for the Cake!!! it was one Beck made, very nice...had Bratz Dolls on it. Cassie is about to cut the cake and you can see me in the middle, and Beck to the right. On the far left is Micheal, Liz's partner.


This is the usual picture Beck does after a party, she sets out all the bits on the lounge and takes a couple of snaps...as you can see, Cassie got lots of nice things.


Ok, until next post, cya

Shawn