Yard update

Between rain and holidays our yard took us a while to get done. It's now pretty much done with the exception of the shed that we still need to install.



The deck with the super cheap patio set we got from Home Depot and lounge set from Canadian Tire. We really enjoy having dinner/cocktails out here when it's not 40 degrees C. :D

View of the yard from the deck. To the left is grass for our dog. To the right is our "car-shaped patio". It'll be useful for parking on and will be good entertaining space for parties etc. One thing we figured out after removing our shed that our lot is 20' wide and we have a pretty ridiculously huge yard (for inner city Toronto anyways ... ;)

We made paths to go around the front of the deck and walkup....

...which lead us to build a funky modern shaped planter bed.

So that's the yard for now. Up next.. waterproofing (we're hiring that one out.. we've had enough digging for one life time) then the basement.

shed --;

With summer on the horizon we're working to finish up our yard. Last year we built a deck. This year we're tearing down the "garage", redoing some fencing and making a parking pad. You can see a rough plan here.

Today we tore down the shack er.. garage. We managed to get most of it into our dumpster but a sizable chunk of it is still sitting in our yard waiting for the next dumpster to come tomorrow. *woo*.

Deck-ed out

Despite the silence progress has not completely stalled on our place. We got the bulk of the deck done very fast but one of us wanted to spend time getting the lattice work and finish details just right before the big reveal. The deck design was mostly inspired by the deck at 247 Reno . We're pretty happy with how it came out. The deck is 10'x~16' which seemed really big when we were planning it, but upon seeing it done I don't think we would have been happy having it much smaller. It does take up quite a bit of space in our yard but once the garage/shack is torn down next summer it should be an appropriate size relative to the yard.

Without further adieu glorious "after" pictures:

This is Trinity next to the outer corner of what was going to be our BBQ "shrine". It seemed weird to be standing peering into our neighbors' yard while BBQing though so we opted to move the BBQ closer to the house.

Trinity with the stairs to the yard.

Outside of the "BBQ Shrine". Next summer we will probably replant the tree in the barrel into the ground. My step-dad horticulturalist says it's an elm (quite common in Central Alberta our homeland)

A lot of attention went into the lattice work and cladding the pressure treated 4x4s because they didn't look as nice as the rest of the pressure treated wood. I'm really happy with how it came out even though I argued that doing this was madness when it was suggested.

What the BBQ Shrine is used for now. It's so nice to look out on this from the kitchen. It makes it feel like our backyard is some tropical place. Unfortunately we didn't finish the deck in time for tropical weather :P.

Stairs down to the garden. Yeah no rail. We live dangerously. Or rather we value prettyness over safety. Get over it, its 2'.

Backyard update

So after giving up on hiring out the siding we ended up doing it ourselves over labor day long weekend. Since then we've been super busy with building the deck and craziness at work. Here are some pictures of the progress. We'll write more later when things are a bit less hectic.





The beginning of the BBQ alcove:

All Wrapped up

So, we got a quote for siding. It wasn't outrageous but it didn't seem like they would do the job to the level we wanted it done. Their proposed solution around the window was J-mold and with no mention of building wrap.

When we installed the kitchen window, we caulked around it but it was basically sitting there with caulk around it and a piece of plywood below it. Given that water can pass onto the underside of the siding we wanted to ensure that the edge around the window was really weather tight. By this point we realized that if we wanted this job done how we wanted it it was probably just easier to do it ourselves. So this weekend we prepped the kitchen for siding, we flashed around the window (using a home made bending solution):

Filled in the gaps around the door and added brick mold

and of course wrapped everything in building wrap. Hopefully we will get to side it this week/weekend and then we can move on to the deck!

In other news we used the money we saved on hiring out siding to hire our contractor neighbor to arrange and install a custom size door from the Habitat for Humanity Re-store in the basement walkup. Things are moving along again!