Our Small Backyard Makeover Plan

I have been promising forever to show you our backyard makeover and today I’m getting things started with the ultimate make-our-backyard-less-pathetic to do list! A long time ago I showed you the before pictures of the yard.

I’m glad we’re still friends after you saw those.

And now that summer is here, it’s the perfect time to get this backyard makeover party started!

We have grand plans for this space. Since we live in an area that gets it’s fair share of winter, we love having our own piece of the outdoors, even if it is small, that we can fully enjoy in the warm summer months. Since we live in the city our neighbors are very close, we share fences, and even though space is tight, we are lucky enough to have a garage, driveway and enough room to enjoy nature.

Our plans include:

• Taking out plants we don’t love
• Removing the sidewalk
• Removing the deck and replacing it with a new one
• Installing a flagstone and reclaimed brick patio
• Redoing the entire landscape
• Planting some new things and growing vegetables

Sounds like fun right? Since many of our to do list items have been completed over the past year and a half (the patio and deck namely) I’ll be showing those in separate posts and will update you on what we have been doing recently too.

For fun, here are some of the before pics. If you think your backyard is pathetic, think again, here is ours. This is the view from the back door out of the kitchen.

And this is the exact opposite view from the back fence.

The space behind the garage was completely useless, with a sidewalk that went nowhere and grass that could instead be a fabulous patio, which is exactly what we have planned for it.

This area of the cement patio might not get addressed with this makeover, but we’d love to do something with it in the future. For now we grill there and put up with the hand-me-down furniture. The air conditioner is broken and I’d love for it to get removed. It takes up too much space. Anyone ever do this? The company wants to charge me $300 and I say no way! There has to be a way we can DIY that thing out of there.

The Backyard Makeover Plan

• Remove the old red deck More on that here
• Remove the cement sidewalk
• Install a new flagstone and reclaimed brick patio
• Reconfigure the landscape around the patio
• Reconfigure the landscape in the rest of the yard
• Remove the red brick edging
• Remove plants we don’t want
• Plant new grass
• Get new plants and grow vegetables, mulch
• Get a patio table, chairs, and umbrella
• Hang some lighting

Here is the design we received from the company we are working with. They are called Northeastern Exteriors and what I love about this company is that they specialize in reclaimed material and have a very modern design aesthetic. Dan went to high school with the owner, so he and his crew will be hanging out in the backyard for a few days, which will be fun.

Longer term plans include:

• Figure out something to do with the cement patio
• Remove the broken air conditioner
• Build a planting bench

Since I can’t leave you with only those terrible pictures to look at, see some of my inspiration for the space on my Outdoor Living board here. And I’ll be sharing more backyard progress ASAP! Tomorrow I’ll be at Pretty Handy Girl showing you how to tile a small table, so visit us there.

And I’m setting up a blog newsletter! Tell me honestly, do you think you’ll want to subscribe to it? I’m thinking monthly updates and would love to know what you think about what I should include.