Backyard Transformation

Before

As of this morning, this was our backyard. Sad, I know. But, let's back up a bit. 

Mike and I had our home built in 2001. The home build package included professional front yard landscaping, which we, with much research, had to decide on what plants and trees we wanted as well as where we wanted those plants and trees planted, and professionals handled the labor (whew - was that a run-on sentence?).  I am happy to say that all of our picks are still looking great today.  The home build package did not include the backyard, so we were on our own.  The backyard was just a big, open dirt pit. A blank canvas.  At that time, we designed the backyard for two grown-ups that had no intention of having kids.  We ended up with a low maintenance yard that was easy to entertain in.

Fast forward twelve years, and our first daughter comes along.  We quickly realize that the backyard is not suited for a child to play in.  In fact, with some of the plants growing back there, it's frankly a tad bit dangerous.  So, for the next five years, the backyard has been undergoing a complete makeover.  Everything was torn down so that we could start over. 

The first thing we did was build the brick patio.  I say "we", but technically it was just my handy hubby - who did a fabulous job, by the way.  Once the brick was laid, Mike and my brother Jason built the dining pergola.

Another fine job by the handy hubby and his brother-in-law.

A company was then brought in to lay concrete curb around the brick, which also encircled the dirt.  Once that was done - grass!!!

We tried real grass.  We had bermuda out there and for awhile, it looked good.  Shortly after moving into the house in 2001, we planted a Chilean Mesquite and an Argentinian Mesquite.  These trees have done such a wonderful job of growing up and spreading their canopy across the backyard, that they have obscured the six hours of sun needed for bermuda to grow.  Great for shading the house, not so much for hardy grass.  We tried other types of grass, with some success, just most could not withstand children playing on it.  So that's how we got to our 'before' photo.  Artificial grass was the way to go!

Bids, bids and more bids.  It was quite surprising how many different varieties of artificial grass there were.  We had to ask ourselves what look we were going for, the feel we were going for, the color we were going for, what it needed to stand up against and how thick the thatch.  Lots o' decisions!  Once those decisions were made, the workers showed up bright and early this morning to make our backyard pretty. 

The grass-installing process was pretty interesting.  First, they would have had to scrap the top layer of soil off to remove any growing grass (if we had some), then they sprayed a pre-emergent to kill any grass that wanted to grow.  Once that was done, they raked on an infill (a sand-like substance but heavier), watered it down and then ran a compactor over it.

Man running the compactor over infill

Once it was compacted enough, they started laying the grass.  Sort of like sod....

 

The grass blanket was laid and cut down to backyard size.  A black filler was then spread over the grass and raked in.  The filler allows the grass to stand up as well as drain.  The whole process took about three hours and then - prettiness:

 

We still have a fair amount of work ahead.  I need to clean up and plant out five beds, but that can wait until cooler weather......JCMT