Backyard

When we bought our house as a foreclosure, we knew we would have a few projects to do. The biggest one was the back yard. This is what it looked like when we moved in:

The lovely shed behing the hot tub was the first thing to go. Our neighbor came and helped Jeff tear it down one Saturday. I'm sure he was just as happy to see it go as we were. We also put a gate around the pool the first day we moved in. We still need to find the replacement grill for the built in BBQ.

against the house

right side of pool

left side of pool

Jeff and I talked a lot about what we wanted to do in the back. We got a few estimates from landscaping companies, and decided to go with one of them that had given us a few ideas. we basically removed all the grass, rocks, plants, and trees that were there, replaced the entire sprinkler system, removed a few concrete slabs, and then added grass, rock, plants, and trees back where we wanted them. We also had the bushes from along the pool transplanted to the perimeter of the yard.

There was a crew of five or more here from Monday morning through Friday afternoon. By the end of it, this is what we had:

against the house
right side *The palm trees look a little funny, because you have to keep the branches tied up for the first month.
We didn't really know what to do with the huge empty side of our yard. For now it's filled with rocks. Someday we'll figure out what to do with it.

left side

The back corner triangle will hopefully be filled with a playground and trampoline sometime sooner than later. We haven't decided what we want on the ground under all of it, so we left it empty for now.