From Yawn to Lawn: Another Chapter in the Home Renovation Saga

You can be sure that your life as you know it is over when you’re seriously considering taking vacation days in order to get work done around the house. After months of procrastination, we are now delving into the myriad half-finished and not-yet-started projects in earnest. There’s nothing like a little external pressure in the form of holiday hosting to motivate oneself to get things in order. With Nathan’s family over for Thanksgiving next week, the clock is ticking to get the “entertaining” spaces in better shape. This means finishing painting the kitchen and the living room and replacing the grandma sconces above the fireplace with the new fixtures that have been sitting in their boxes since I purchased them weeks ago.

On a bigger scale, we have friends coming to visit in January, and there is currently nowhere for them to stay. For some time I’ve been envisioning turning one of the two small, half-finished bedrooms in the basement into a guest room, but with all the other work going on around the house, it hasn’t been high on the list up to this point. Now with the impending arrival of our company, it has been elevated to priority number one. And there’s a lot to do before January. There are the walls to patch and paint, furniture to procure and arrange, and a number of DIY projects to begin and hopefully see through.

At the same time, I’m working to try to have the first floor bathroom revamped before our guests’ stay, as it is the one they’ll be using and is currently in a rather sad state (think dusty lace curtains and lime green walls). This will naturally involve painting and wallpapering, replacing the hardware and vanity light, as well as undertaking the inevitable DIY project or two. Fortunately, I have a vision in place for these rooms and already have or have ordered most of the supplies and fixtures I’ll need. Still, it’ll be a tight schedule to get it all done in time. Hence the unfortunate decision to take some dedicated house reno PTO.

Oh, and did I mention the leak from the second floor bathroom that suddenly sprang from the living room ceiling just inches from where I was working at my desk a few weeks ago? Actually, better we not even go there right now. But it’s not all remodeling woes here. We have people coming next week to frame out the windows and install new cork flooring in the master bedroom, at which point we will, at long last, be able to move into our room. More to come on that soon (or late, depending on how much of my time the aforementioned projects take up over the next several weeks), but for now, I’d like to share a quick update on a project that is more or less completed.

It began over the summer, when Nathan decided that, without a plan or budget in place, he was going to tear out the lower deck in our backyard. At that point the yard was almost all deck, consisting of an upper and lower part and treated to an unfortunate and now-peeling coat of red paint. The previous owner, an avid collector of junk, left behind three large storage sheds that took up most of the remaining space. There was no grass, a single tree, and a small bed full off weeds along the back fence line with no other vegetation to speak of. To give ourselves – and the dog – some actual yard, we determined that the deck had to go. We’d start with the lower portion and perhaps replace the rest of the deck with a patio in the future.

Demolition was quick compared to how long all the trash lingered before we hauled it away. It was even longer before we were able to do anything with the eyesore we’d created. I wrote in June about the deck removal and speculated about hiring a landscaper in the near future to fix our mess. Had I known then that it would be October before that happened, I might have tried to persuade Nathan to hold off on turning our yard into a dirt pit for a bit longer. Nevertheless, once we finally got around to hiring out the job, the crew was able to make quick work of our little project, knocking it out in less than two days.

The end result, as you’ll see in the following images, is not anything special. Just your standard yard, with nothing of note or real beauty. But because I know where it started and how far it’s come, to me the transformation is incredible. It’s nothing more than a simple 300-square-foot patch of grass and a couple newly mulched beds, but the difference between that and the old red decking that stretched from fence to fence – it’s worlds apart. Although, there is also the 43-foot French drain that was dug along the deck to ensure that rainwater no longer runs towards the house (a win in of itself). It’s not a design feature per se, but it still adds a nice visual element with the smooth grey rocks contrasting against the vividness of the green lawn and black mulch.

There’s more yet to do, predominantly around adding vegetation to beef up the sparse beds. We plan to add trees along the chain-link fence to both provide privacy and obscure said fence, but the blue spruce that we want are apparently not currently available. Our landscaper assures us that he’s keeping an eye out at the local nurseries, but no word yet, and it’s getting past time for planting. Looks like another project for the future.

In the meantime, we are very much enjoying the new space. The dog is quite possibly the biggest fan. After being kept out of the backyard for the first three weeks to allow the sod to take root, he now joyously tears across the lawn every morning in pursuit of squirrels and happily uses it as his personal latrine. Earlier this week, he found himself in such a fit of apparent glee that he just had to express it by digging up and eating the grass.

So now we have a soccer ball-sized hole in our beautiful new lawn – and a duly reprimanded dog. Of course, I shouldn’t expect anything different. Get anything nice and sooner or later, your pets or kids will ruin it. It’s just the nature of things. Which is precisely why, after all the effort I’ll be putting into sprucing up the guest bedroom, it will be enjoyed exclusively by adult humans.