Our backyard had a makeover!

Ever since we bought our lovely home, we have enjoyed every inch of the house. We can't say the same for our little backyard though. It was filled with weeds and that has deterred us from enjoying the beautiful Melbourne weather at the back. It just makes no sense to mow the weed every month. It's just horrible especially during spring & summer. Its dying for our personal touch!

We have been looking around on ideas how to give it a little makeover. Our initial plan was to lay a layer of golf grass but the price tag put us off. It seems that we need to recondition our soil before laying the grass, which I have to get someone in to get it sorted (labour cost too expensive) and we still need to maintain it every month or so. I am a little discouraged in that! 

We then started looking into decking and turned out to be something we can manage without much effort.  We can either do it ourselves or get someone in to get it all nicely done up. Good old friend of ours, Devin was looking into decking for his love nest as well and found a bargain on deck tiles at a local furniture shop. It was a bargain too good to refuse, we ended up saving a couple of hundred bucks! Sweet! 

It's not fixed in the ground, so we can take it with us if we decide to move to a bigger place 10 years down the line. Double Sweet!!

To be honest, it was a leap of faith. In theory the preparation and fixing the deck tiles seem easy but once we get into it, it quickly proved otherwise.

We bought the deck tiles end of April, we had to wait for 4 weeks before we can start to rock and roll. Weeds need to be killed, make sure they are stone dead before putting anything on top. Didn't realize it would take 1 month for the darn weed to die! A slight bump in our plan. That's ok.

Last weekend was the 4th week since poison was sprayed. Weather was beautiful, the sun was out, occasionally getting some cool breeze from the south with a maximum temperature of 20 degrees, it was the perfect condition for the makeover to happen. 

It took us the whole weekend, the first day (Saturday) spent more on re-planning and "discussion". :D The second day was a much better and it went by fairly quickly. We knew what we had to do and we had a firmer picture what's the end result we want it to be. 

When we finished laying the deck tiles, we were quite satisfied with our great job. Once we filled in the gaps with pebbles, we were just blown away with the effect. It's much prettier than we first thought and it looks better at night when the pebbles reflect the moonlight. It illuminates our backyard! Triple Sweet!

We are really happy with our backyard project. Though my back still hurts from the constant lifting of the deck tiles the whole weekend, it was well worth it! 

REALLY HAPPY!

 Our horrible weed garden at the back

 

The horrible weeds up close

The savior - deck tiles. 12 packs in total (1 pack = 4 tiles)

Horrible weeds exterminated

The casualty from all the stone-dead weed digging

Laying the deck tiles on top of the weed mat (1)

 Laying the deck tiles on top of the weed mat (2)

All deck tiles joined up (1)

All deck tiles joined up (2) 

White pebbles in, adds a new dimension to the whole area 

Next... BBQ.