Backyard Remodel on an Extreme Budget
by
Barb Smith
$4500.00
3 Weeks
Medium
My backyard was a disaster! 4 dogs, 2 being young and playful, the occasional foster, destroyed the yard. In Spring and rainy periods, it consisted of mud and water. Something had to be e adone! I begged a friend to come and help me raise the ground. We talked about what would be best. Grass was pointless with the dogs. They would have it ripped up within the week. Then we settled on artificial turf. BUT, the price was way beyond my meager budget ($15K to have it installed; $8k-10K taboo have it delivered). We weren’t even talking about my entire yard.
I put down anything that allowed us to get to higher ground.
A
On a long weekend in August 2015, a friend and his friend came and helped. They dug everything up, including the roots to my sleepy old tree.
Being on a limited budget, regular paving stone was too expensive. I remembered that the Rehab Store had a mound of it.
Only thing was that it all was different sizes and shapes but would have to do. And it had to all be moved that day.
Sand was leveled and stone was laid to create border
A few new paving blocks needed to be bought to extend patio to end of border
Area is prepared with quarter-down limestone and topped with sand. Artificial turf was ordered from Home Depot to cover 22 x 19 ft (4 pieces of turf).
Meanwhile I began to work on Stage 2. Backfill from the turf area needed to be spread to raise the middle part of my yard.
Once the backfill was spread and stomped, quarter-down limestone was added in layers. Stomped into place before another layer was added.
The finished product divides the yard into 3 areas: the artificial turf area for the dogs to play on; the graveled area and the real grass area. Our heavy amount of rain this summer caused no flooding or above ground water retention. Yay!
The dogs love the turf. Will see how well it works once we get through the picking up leaves in the fall and spring thaw.
Still work to do along the back fence but this can wait until next year.
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2 of 3 comments
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Thank you. We had a lot of rain in all at once bursts. So grateful yard was done.
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$4500 is an extreme budget????????
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