Category: Backyard

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While we were Away

I haven’t posted in awhile, but it’s not because nothing has been happening. We have been so busy over the past 3 months that I’ve hardly had a spare minute to document all the things we’ve been up to. I’m better at giving regular, real-time updates on instagram in my posts and stories. So go check us out there if you want to stay updated with what we’ve got going on daily! Otherwise, keep reading for the quick summary of what we’ve been up to and the sneak peeks on all the upcoming blog posts. 

Since my last blog post:

  • We finished our deck build (including the second story balcony off our master bedroom)

  • We installed hardwood floors downstairs (that washable rug is Lorena Canals) 

  • We remodeled this adorable (and free) outdoor playhouse for our girls that was given to us by our neighbors

  • We moved our office space into an office nook (I.e. in a corner in the playroom)

  • We uncovered a massive leak in our sports room which subsequently led to us ripping out about 2 full sheets worth of plywood to uncover what was causing the leak- stopped the leak, but still need to repair the damage from the leak and close the wall up.

  • We weathered hurricane Irma, and lost a couple trees, storage shed and some fencing

  • We removed all the debris and shed

  • We DIY painted/sealed the lower deck and started on the stairs and upper deck

  • We replaced our entire fence with the help of Fence Hut

  • We turned our office into a guest bedroom (after the office nook space was created)

  • We installed lots and lots of shelves during a massive home reorganization

  • We hung lights in our backyard

  • And we saved 15% on car insurance by switching to geico

Okay… I’m kidding on that last one. We actually just dropped geico because progressive had better rates… and there was that one time I dressed up as Flo for Halloween…

Also since my last post, we’ve had some big things happening in our family:

  • Our sweet second niece, Charlie was born

  • We were the tackiest tourists ever on our first Disney cruise

  • Our littlest babe turned a year old

  • I ran my first half marathon

  • And we went on our first ever family camping trip- with our 1 and 2 year old… and had a BLAST!

So the bad news is that while I’ve been neglecting my blog, you guys have missed a few things. The good news is, I have a very long list of blog post topics to share with you guys and I’m fully planning on dishing out all of the ins and outs, good and bad of basically everything in that list up there.

I also have a HUGE secret (No, I’m NOT pregnant). I don’t want to say too much and jinx a possible opportunity, but we are working on some really big things that are all around good for our family, life goals and really good blog content. The blog content part wasn’t our biggest motivator, but it is without a doubt a nice perk! So stay tuned, sit back and enjoy the good stuff ahead. Thanks for following along friends!

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When You’re Good to Paint Pressure Treated Wood- Lessons from a Painting Professional

If you’ve been following along with our backyard renovations and deck rebuild, then you may know that we have switched our plans around quite a bit throughout these renovations. I had a vision of the look I wanted, but after consulting with professional arborists, contractors and our painter, we have changed a few things around. Originally, when we planned to redo our backyard deck, we wanted to put concrete down in place of the old deck that we had. I liked the idea of the smooth light gray and planned to accent it with natural cedar. When all was said and done, we decided concrete wouldn’t work for us and we decided to do a new deck instead. We still plan to accent with cedar although we’re not building our entire deck out of cedar. And because mixed wood tones is a huge pet peeve of mine, I want to paint our deck.

In the midst of our renovations, I stayed in touch with our painter since he was giving us a discount on the exterior painting of our house if we did it after the back deck was removed (and before the new one was built). As I was explaining our plans to him, he gave me some helpful advice that I would have otherwise not known.

You shouldn’t paint fresh pressure treated wood
When we decided to go with wood decking over composite (mainly because of the price) we knew we were committing to keeping our deck well maintained and protected from the elements. I immediately started looking for wood sealers and options for protecting the wood. I knew I didn’t want a stain. I wanted an opaque light gray finish so that the cedar beams would stand out, but according to our painter: You can stain wood right away with an oil based stain, but you shouldn’t paint or seal new pressure treated wood right away because it needs time to cure and dry out before you seal it up. If you paint it without letting it dry, the paint will not last.


Photo Credit: The Feathered Tumblr

Our painter explained that a sealer locks the chemicals and moisture inside and eventually those same chemicals and moisture will eat through the fresh paint and it will begin to chip and peel and bubble. The green-ish hues in the new pressure treated wood are an indication that it has a higher moisture content.

How long do I have to wait before I can paint my wood deck?
After the wood has had a chance to dry. In Florida, this would typically take 1 or 2 seasons. Since we are finishing our deck in late Spring, we will likely paint our deck sometime mid to late Fall. In other extremely dry parts of the world, wood can dry out and be ready for paint in as little as just 2 weeks.

if I can’t paint or seal the wood right away, what do I do to protect my new deck from the elements in the interim?
Nothing. Your wood is pressure treated, and that will keep your wood from rotting while you give it some time to dry a bit. If you wait too long to seal the wood, it will eventually start to go bad, but just a season or 2 won’t hurt it.

How do I know my wood is ready for paint?
You can determine if your deck is ready to be painted by sprinkling some water on your deck. If water beads up then the boards are still too moist to paint or seal. If the water soaks right in, then your deck is dry enough for paint.

Photo: Today’s Homeowner with Danny Lipford

Thanks to our amazing painter, Sam Rios for always doing quality work at great prices and for sharing your experience and wisdom with a couple young, newbie home-renovators. If you’re local and looking for a painter, we know a guy!

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Updates on our Backyard Renovation

I’m so excited about the progress we’re making on our Backyard Renovation! So far, we have demolished the entire deck including the second story balcony, stairs and outhouse.  We’ve leveled out the dirt to prepare for the new deck and while everything was torn down, we thought it would be the perfect time to paint our house. So we did that too. And after this poll, we decided to go with the darker color for our house despite the fact that approximately 90+ percent of you guys voted for the lighter color. If you know me well, then you know I am anything but the type to follow the crowd, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

Right now our backyard is a construction zone. It’s full of dirt and it’s nearly impossible to keep the dogs from tracking all the dirt inside. So don’t expect too many posts about the inside of our house, until we get this backyard renovation completed, because I’m basically constantly cleaning and yet nothing ever seems clean. That’s the life of a full-time working mama in the middle of big home renovations right? We do make time for our kiddos and we love our family time. This past Easter weekend was full of it. Here’s a sweet shot of us at church yesterday after the Easter service.

We spent this weekend out and about, because there’s not too many spots around here to hangout with the construction zone in the back and the front yard off limits because we are trying to grow us some grass. Luckily, we are fortunate to have family with an awesome pool to spend all afternoon Sunday swimming. Meanwhile in our backyard… There is a LOT of dirt and leaves.

We have made some big decisions on the backyard renovation. We decided to do all wood deck (instead of concrete) for the bottom and top story, so that we could keep our live oak. We also decided not to put a roof over the entire deck, just the top balcony (which is off our master bedroom). The top balcony will be covered and screened in. We may add in a roof over the bottom at some point, but for now, our tree gives us plenty of shade and the Tree Lady  says it’s in perfect condition to live on for years to come. You can see the trunk in the picture below.

We have also decided to keep the shell of our backyard shed for now (pictured below).

We have never used this for anything but occasional storage, and had originally planned on tearing it down to make more backyard space for the dogs and kids to play in. However, now that we’re not planning to have a roof put in over the bottom deck, we’re thinking we may take the walls and floors out and keep the supports and the roof to have our own little covered space. Stay tuned to see what we do with it!

I know there is still a lot left to do, but it’s encouraging to see how far we’ve come already when this is where we started.

We can’t wait to share the finished product with you! You can follow us on Instagram (@phillipsflips) to stay in the loop with all of our day to day progress and updates.

 

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Backyard Renovation Updates: Demolition Progress, Next Steps & Bad News about our Trees

Last week we learned that aluminum costs way more than we thought. We got a price quote for the entire rebuild of our second story deck which includes demo of the current deck and stairs, custom built, water sealed storage under the stairs, a full rebuild of the stairs and second story deck as well as having all of the upright posts wrapped in cedar. The aluminum roof quote which includes demo of the current aluminum roof and installation of new aluminum roof as well as screening in the second story deck was nearly 2 times the cost of the deck quote and about 4 times more than we were expecting. Before we got the quote for the aluminum, we were thinking that we were very close to having the money saved up to cover the whole project. Now, we are certain that we don’t have enough cash at the moment, but we are plugging on. We’re going to take each item one step at a time and if this means that we have dirt as the ground covering for our bottom floor for a few months, while we save up, then so be it. Maybe we will let Piper experience the fun of mud-pies once it starts getting rainy around here.

While we did have a bit of sticker shock from the aluminum roofing quote, we decided to keep the momentum going and continue to move forward with the renovation. Right now we’re simultaneously working on finalizing the drafts and getting architect’s approval on our rebuild while we are DIY demoing the bottom deck.

Anyone need some old wood? We are not quite halfway through the bottom story demo and this is our output. Thinking that perhaps one dumpster won’t be enough to hold everything! 

Speaking of our DIY deck demo, here’s what we’ve done on that so far:


It’s definitely coming along. We still need to demo the main area under roof and then we have to tackle the shed back there.

Here’s another shot of the deck we have left to demo:

(Featuring our newest addition to the indoor house plants! I found this guy at Lowes this weekend and brought him home as our first medium-sized floor plant/tree. Hoping he enjoys our family room as much as we do.)

In other news, The Tree Lady came out this weekend to talk to us about our oak trees. She had amazing insight and I learned a ton in just the 15 minutes she was here. I highly recommend her if you’re looking to trim/remove/save your trees and are located in Winter Haven, FL or surrounding areas! The main reason we brought her out was to talk to her about trimming up the tree in the picture above (not our newest little guy – that big live oak to the left). One of the large branches that’s currently stretching out above our current roof needs to be removed completely in order to make way for our new roof plans. We plan to push the current roof up to the same level as the second story roof so that from the second story you can look down into the main patio area. So we needed to make sure that we could remove the branch without killing the whole tree – because my dream was to leave the tree there and work our patio space/concrete floors/aluminum roof around it. The good news is we can cut the branch with a 60-ish% chance of survival for the tree.

The bad news is, the only  ground cover we can put back down this close to the tree is more deck. The concrete we want would be ruined within a few years because the roots of the live oak would try to surface and push up through the concrete. So after serious thought and discussions about potentially changing our whole deck plans to accommodate this tree, we decided with heavy hearts that we will remove the whole tree instead.

Fun fact: when you look at a tree’s canopy (the large green part at the top), the root system of that tree will be 2.5 times bigger than the canopy.

So that means that this tree right here is already growing big surface-level roots dangerously close to our house’s foundation and while it may not be an issue right now, we can surely expect it to be an issue in 10 or so years. So even though 10 years sounds like a lifetime away, we determined it would be in the long-term best interest of the house/deck/future homeowners, to remove the tree.

As we plug along on our demo, the first official contracted step of the backyard renovation is taking off today! Our aluminum roofing guy is coming out to demo the roof. After he takes the roof down, he will determine how much (if any) of the aluminum panels can be reused and we are hoping that once the demo is finished, we will learn that the majority of pieces can be reused for our new roof which would save us a considerable amount on the roofing quote. More on that next week.

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Our Backyard Renovation Plans

I’m finally putting pen to paper on our plans for our backyard, and man is it getting real! We have been saving up for this project since we finished buying our Christmas gifts last year (around mid-December) and we have been planning and getting inspiration for our backyard renovation since June 2015 – when we moved into this house. We’re planning to share all the details of the entire process right here for you to follow along, but for starters, we wanted you to see the “before” photos and share a little bit about our future and upcoming plans for this space.

Welcome to our backyard:

As you can see, the backyard is full of decking- literally. With the exception of our side-yard, a few flower beds and our long concrete driveway, our backyard is almost entirely solid wood. There was a “pool” when we moved in. And by pool, I mean that technically we had an above ground pool that was built into our raised deck, but it could be more accurately described as a broken-down plastic hole used for frog and mosquito breeding. So this was one of the very first things to go. We ripped this all out piece by piece which left us with a giant hole on one side of our yard that can be seen below:

It’s a really unappealing look – not to mention very unsafe for little kids. We’ve been living with this hole over here for almost 2 years now and we are finally ready to tackle this backyard renovation project.

First, we are demoing EVERYTHING! Literally every non-living structure in our backyard is getting ripped out, with the exception of this completely unfinished mother-in-law apartment- which we also have big plans for, but that’s another post for another day.

We recently decided to do the demo of our backyard ourselves instead of paying someone to do it for us. It’s proving to be a slow and arduous process that’s taking even longer than normal because we are having to fit the time in somewhere between our day jobs and parenting 2 little ones under the age of 3, but we are looking forward to getting the most bang for our buck! You can read more about the beginning of our DIY backyard deck demo here.

As of last night, this is how far we had come.

Like I said, it’s a slow process, but even a little progress is still progress, and I’m okay with that.

Once we finish the demo, we plan on rebuilding this second story deck in the same dimensions that it is currently.

The things we are doing differently with the rebuild include ensuring that the posts holding it up will be in the right spots. You can see in this picture below that the second story hangs past the posts that are holding it up and there are no additional supports to the part of the deck that’s hanging over. So those posts will be moved to the corners of the deck to support the entire second story properly.

We will be eliminating a few of the posts holding up the deck as well. Right now we have 4 posts going across the main part of our deck. We will be eliminating 2 of the 4 posts so that the only remaining posts will be the ones on the corners of the upper deck and around the edges where the roof needs to be supported. In the photo below, you would only see the post on the far left of the picture (but it would be moved out to the corner of the deck instead of in the middle).

The floor joists supporting the deck will also be built closer together- they are currently 24 inches apart which is not considered “to code” for the 2 X 4’s they are supporting. We’re going to install modern industrial railings around the upper deck and stairs.

I love the simple black iron railings here from Jordan Iverson Signature Homes

I also love the mixed metal and wood in these railings from Atlantis Rail Systems.

As part of our re-build of the second story, we will be gutting this outhouse- yes we have an outhouse and yes, it is plumbed and officially counts as a 1/2 bath for our home.

It also moonlights as a nice nesting ground for the local squirrels, opossums and small rodents.  So we will be removing it and replacing this spot with a very nicely sealed and (hopefully) waterproof custom storage area that will extend all the way under the stairs.

We originally wanted to do a composite decking solution for our stairs and deck, but after researching and weighing the pros and cons, we ultimately decided that we would rather save the money by doing a wood deck and painting and sealing it. We also made the decision to commit to the yearly maintenance of re-sealing that’s required to keep a wood deck in good condition. We’re planning to use standard pine for the deck and paint it a medium grey color similar to this deck featured on Atlantis Rail Systems website.

But we plan to use cedar posts for all of the supports that we’re going to seal with a clear sealer so we can see the natural wood accents like in this photo from 2Modern.

We are also planning to re-structure and slightly extend the aluminum roof above our deck area. Right now we have 2 different roof lines: one over the second story and another that begins at the top of the railing for the second story and angles down to the end of our deck. You can see what I mean in the photo below:

We are planning to move the bottom roof to meet up with the upper roof-line and also extend it out to go the full length of the upper roof. We are also going to extend the roof across the side of the house a bit to cover the stairs and help keep them from being hit directly by all the elements- which, in Florida, really just includes sunshine and rain. You can see below how the stairs are uncovered right now.

We’re also going to screen in the upstairs balcony and add a door for access to the stairs and another door on the other side for easy roof access in place of the gate we have right now.

Once all of the building/painting/roofing/screening is finished, we will have our concrete guy install some simple polished concrete that will span the entire bottom level for the area that’s under the roof.

We like a medium grey but with natural variations and something with the natural shine of polished concrete (not high gloss). We like something similar to the floors in this updated farmhouse by Archizer.

Or the concrete in the photo below featured in this article by Homedit.

Finally, once we finish everything above, we will frame everything with some minimalist, low-maintenance landscaping and some grass for our dogs.

Phase 2 of the project will include outdoor kitchen plans, a bar, a mounted TV and furniture- but we’re just wrapping our minds (and our budget) around phase 1 for now.

Still left on our to-do list after we finish the demo:

  1. Finalize our drawings and get the architect to sign-off on the final building plans for our second story balcony and stairs.
  2. Pull the permits for the entire project – we will save money by doing this ourselves rather than having multiple contractors pull permits for their own pieces of the work.
  3. Finish collecting quotes for the rebuild of our second story deck, the pouring of our first floor concrete, the rebuild/restructure of our aluminum roof covering and screened in second story balcony.
  4. Bring in dirt to level out our backyard and fill in the holes
  5. Have our aluminum guy demo the current aluminum roof (We’re attempting to reuse anything we can from our current roof since it’s in good condition- so we’re letting the expert handle this part of the demo)
  6. Build the 2nd story balcony and stairs
  7. Rebuild the new aluminum roof
  8. Paint and seal the wood decking on the balcony and stairs
  9. Pick out, order and install some modern iron railings for the second story and stairs
  10. Screen in the second story balcony
  11. Pour and finish the concrete on the first floor
  12. Re-work the backyard landscaping and lay down some sod

We’ll be checking these off our list one by one and keeping you updated as we make our way through it. We hope you enjoy following us throughout this process. You can subscribe to receive email notifications of our updates on our home page.

Update: For more on the plans and status of our backyard renovation, check this post out.

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5 Reasons we are NOT Using a General Contractor

When this process started, I thought that a “general contractor” was just the fancy term for a person who was licensed to build things with permits and stuff. That just goes to show how much we actually knew about construction! We originally planned to have someone do our entire backyard transformation for us, and of course we first went to some general contractors to get quotes. It didn’t take long for me to realize that a “general contractor” is actually someone who charges you to get quotes and juggle all the people that have to come together to build something. The “official” definition of a general contractor is,

“[Someone who] is responsible for the day-to-day oversight of a construction site, management of vendors and trades, and the communication of information to all involved parties throughout the course of a building project.”

Don’t get me wrong, I am certainly not undermining the value of this position and I can only imagine how important it would be to have a general contractor for any major build. However, for a backyard deck demo and rebuild, it seems a bit excessive and after our first quote of $50,000, downright crazy.

Here’s why we chose not to use a general contractor on our backyard transformation.

1. Steep Price Tag – We are just literally not able to spend $50K on a backyard makeover. So we have already started cutting and shaving items off our “dream list” and one of the first things to go was the general contractor.

One thing that we will not be cutting from our “dream list” is how we plan to incorporate one of our backyard live oaks into the deck plans! 1. I can’t bear the thought of taking down the tree with all the little bird nests nestled up there. And 2. Live trees worked into the architectural design of outdoor spaces are seriously one of my top 5 favorite things. How can you not love this?


– And this beauty designed by Dana Pacific Landscape in California. Hats off to you Dana.


2. No Time Crunch – I can see the value in having a project manager overseeing the building, scheduling the workers and making sure that each piece of the puzzle fits in right where it belongs. I know the process would be quicker and more efficient if we had a general contractor running the show, but frankly we aren’t in a time crunch. We don’t have deadlines, we’re not rushing to get our backyard ready, and I would rather take my time and live in a construction zone for a little bit longer if it means saving big bucks on this transformation.

3. I Know a Guy – I get that one of the benefits of having a general contractor is being able to use their connections to get the best prices/quality work, but we already know a guy- we know a handyman who’s offered to help us with some of the big demo pieces for a steal of a price. We know the best concrete guy in the city shout out to No Boring Concrete in Lakeland, FL. We have a couple builder friends, and when all else fails, social media is the best avenue for getting some solid recommendations for local businesses. So even though it might take us a little longer to weed through the quotes/reviews/options, we’re already halfway there and willing to put in the work.

Check out some inspiration from our concrete guy’s previous projects!

Aren’t these concrete countertops dreamy? Check out the built in herb planters – makes me wish we had a wall of windows in our kitchen!


And just try not to drool over this modern wood accent on these concrete counter tops! No Boring Concrete did these for one of Lakeland’s new coffee shops (Concord Coffee).


4. I Know What I Want – The more I talk to contractors/architects/pool guys/handymen/painters etc. about my vision for our home, the more I realize that what I like and what I want is not the “norm” around here. I don’t know if it’s the modern, mid-century vibe that throws people or if they just don’t understand implementing something with clean straight lines and a minimalist approach, but I just can’t rely on a GC to be able to get quotes and carry out my vision on this whole project. I know what I want, but no one else seems to! And let’s be real, some things are bound to get lost in translation right? It will feel good to know that I can control who does what and I can take each person step by step to see my vision and make sure expectations are clear (plus possibly save money by doing some things ourselves!)

Speaking of DIY, we’re thinking about DIY-ing our own privacy fence once we get things cleared out. Check out this chalkboard privacy fence some friends of ours found at The Bearded Pig in Jacksonville, FL! I love the clean, modern style plus the bonus of a lifetime of family chalk drawings. It could also double as a handy scoreboard for outdoor games, seasonal murals, birthday decorations, practicing ABC’s… the possibilities are endless!


5. We Learn More – We are admittedly not experienced in construction work, building things, cutting things or any other number of home projects. I’ve learned a few things from watching my dad over the years and JP knows even less than I do. So we’re really learning as we go. Not having a GC will require us to be involved in every aspect of our backyard transformation, and we are bound to learn a few things. We will be more hands-on and by default able to take some notes and get some good tips for more DIY projects in the future – which will all be thoroughly documented right here of course!

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A DIY Backyard Demo to Kick off our Backyard Makeover

Today we started demo on our backyard deck. It was a total sporadic, impulsive decision that is completely characteristic of my husband. He went to the gym to get in a quick workout while the girls were napping and came back with a circular saw that he had borrowed and picked up from my parents’ house. He proceeded to walk right outside and start sawing our deck and pulling up boards. (In case you missed the memo, we have big plans for our backyard space- but we’ll share more about that later)

Here’s a little more on the story behind this impulsive (yet wonderfully frugal and DIY-ish) decision to demo our own deck:

When we moved into this giant and beautiful fixer-upper that we call our home, 90% of our large backyard was full of decking that had probably once looked amazing. However when we moved in, the wood boards were rickety and on their last leg. They were borderline unsafe to walk on and certainly not “family friendly” for a family with a soon-to-be toddler. Imbedded in our deck was a run-down above-ground pool that was serving as a breeding ground for frogs and mosquitos and any number of other green slimey organisms. We decided that needed to go as soon as possible. We hired a handyman to rip out the pool piece by piece and the rim of deck immediately surrounding the pool which left us with a couple steep drop-offs on the side of our deck and a large hole full of dirt on one side of our yard. We have been living like this for a little over a year and half. So we have had plenty of time to dream up what our backyard will one day be.

After tackling the non-cosmetic “required” fixes in our home and several months of planning and saving (and a forth-coming tax return), we are finally ready to redo our backyard. So first things first, we need to demo what we’ve got before we can build new stuff. Our first quote to demo our backyard woodpile was $14,000. -yes, JUST the demo! If your mouth dropped when you read that, then you share my sentiments exactly. When we were shopping around for quotes, we didn’t know what to expect or what standard prices for this kind of stuff would be, but we definitely never dreamed the demo alone would cost $14,000. This demo includes TONS of decking, a second story balcony, outdoor stairs, an outhouse [yes, someone built and outhouse in our backyard] and a large wooden building that was at one time used as a dog pen and/or fish cleaning station, but it is all JUST just wood.

So we set out for some cheaper options…

We reached out to some handymen to get demo quotes and we found a guy who quoted us just $3,000 for the demo if we could provide a dumpster. All-in we were looking at $3,500 to completely remove everything made of wood (barring the live oaks) and that was something we could stomach.

We began to move forward on quotes for the build of the 2nd store deck, the polished concrete that’s going to make up the ground floor, modern steel railing for the stairs and top deck and dirt/sod companies to fill in the rest of the yard. All the while we have been saving.

Fast-forward to this afternoon. My husband shows up with a saw and says, “babe just think what we could do with $3,500!”

Okay! You got me. Have at that deck with your saw that you’ve never used before. Just don’t lose any fingers okay?

Here’s JP making the first cut. He’s standing in the hole that used to be home to the above ground pool and surrounding deck that I mentioned earlier. Now you can visualize the “unsafe” edges I was talking about right?


Look at him go. There’s nothing sexier than a man with initiative and determination am I right? He spent about 20 minutes outside and this was the result:


Pretty good right?

There’s still a lot of work to be done, but we’ve never been so determined. Now that we have seen just how easy it is to pull this stuff up and add to that the promise of saving at least $3,000, this decision seems like a no brainer.

Feeling good about the plans ahead. More on our Backyard plans and the inspiration behind it coming soon!