The Back Yard

Wow...the back yard. Where to begin....

When we moved into our new house, our backyard was our "special project".  It took us about a year to really get it where we want it to be. Before our house was restored, it had been unoccupied for many years. Prior to restoration, the house was, quite frankly, in shambles. It had been boarded up and left to rot away.

So...when we cleaned out our backyard we found all kinds of artifacts from the previous owners. Don't get excited; there was no gold, pottery ruins or arrowheads, but rather, truck loads of garbage, debris, glass, etc. Here are a few photos of the progress we made in the back yard, as well as a photo of what our house looked like prior to being re-habbed. You'll find pre-renovation photos of our house throughout this blog because we want the world to see that restoration is real. If you can restore this.... you can restore just about anything.

Here are two photos of the back of the mansion, before it was restored. I can barely even tell what's what in these photos:

And here is what it looked like when we bought it:

We started with the back yard by building Thomas a pen under the porch. Look for a later post about Thomas and his pen. It deserves a post all its own. The next step was building the "man cave," raised beds and the compost bin.

Now for the Man Cave 
(aka Step #2 in making the backyard perfect)

<Behold: The "Man Cave," in all it's framed splendor.  It is really just a storage shed. I will not spend alot of time on the man cave because we did not actually build it (see man cave disclaimer below). Chris did design it though, and he purchased the materials. We had a friend who is a carpenter actually build it. Let us know if you need someone to do something similar; he has mad skills.   

< Finished Product of the Man Cave. Chris has filled the man cave with lots of man things, including this refinished farm table.

 This has become his work table, one of our better Craigs List finds if I do say so myself.

Add a little sod, pine straw and flowers:

<and there you have it; a backyard, complete with man cave and landscaping. 

Good job, Chris! (I supervised, of course)