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.

DIY for the house

We are slowly getting the hang of doing things ourselves. One of our latest addition to our list of DIY is the tv shelf. We were shopping around looking for a tv shelf as the old one is bit low. After a long search around furniture shops, we decided to stick back to Ikea. At least we can mix and match the way that we want and it is also one of the cheapest around.

It took us 2 trips and a long discussion on which layout to get. Finally we settled on having one tall shelf for mags, one shelf for the tv and one small shelf on the other side for miscellaneous. When we were at the collection area, we were surprised with the number of items needed to fix up the whole 3 piece shelves. It got us worried in how were we going to fit all the boxes in the car????

Good thing about Ikea is that all the boxes are flat but still it took us a while at the loading bay to fit everything in the car. It is really like doing a box puzzle, interesting if you can solve, if not it is frustrating. Not only we had to put the back seat down, we also move forward the front passenger seat to the max! I can tell you that the going back home was like sitting in an Airasia flight. Normally its comfortable and spacious like MAS business class. =)

There were 16 boxes in total - managed to squeeze everything in!

All 16 boxes ready to be assembled

Wanted to take the whole process but the we got carried away to finish up the shelf. Only managed to take the process of the big shelf.

The frame of the shelf

Shelf with legs and glass door.

Shelf with legs, glass doors and lower drawers.

Completion of the shelf no 1.

The whole complete 3 piece shelves took us around 5hrs and the final product!

We are really pleased with the result, now it fills up the room and it also makes our small tv looks bigger!!! Even Stephen say so... looks like he does not have any reason to get a bigger one!! =P

A new beginning

We have finally moved into our new house. A big pat on our back!!!

Coming back home, driving up to our garage, still smelling the newly polished floor scent and leather sofas, it feels really good!! Makes me want to come home even more. :D

Even though a lot of hours spent in cleaning, unpacking the boxes and arranging our stuffs around the house, we were enjoying it and it turns out to be exactly how we visualized it to be. Guess it's easier now with a bit more room for us to play around.

The whole experience is a journey in itself. Get to learn things that I never thought of, from changing locks to realigning the cabinet door to solving simple electrical issues. The satisfaction from these is just sensational!!! I am beginning to appreciate DIY and understand why the locals love it so much.

At the moment, the walls are pretty empty. We are thinking of what photos and decors we should hang. Now we can make a few holes in the wall without having rental agents screaming their heads off. :D

I was exploring the surrounding last week and found out that our house is actually very strategically located. We knew its very close to the freeway and a supermarket is only 5 minutes walking distance, there's also a huge shopping districts about 5 minutes drive away. Not too far and not too close. Just perfect! To top it off, it's very near to a number of good dim sum place that I am very fond of.

We are proud of what we have achieved so far and I hope our parents will be as well when they see our humble home.

A colleague of mine asked me this morning how does it feel to finally going back to my own house after work. I told her it's the same feeling when she got married, no words can truly describe our feeling right now.