Backyard Landscaping - DIY

Hi Kylz,

yes, I screwed a treated pine sleeper to the fence posts at the back to spread the load of the soil in the garden bed.

This photo here shows how I positioned it.
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d31/GMiladinovic/IMG_3136.jpg

So the next phase of the backyard landscaping has been done and I chose to get the professionals in.

Tom at Lifetime Decking came and knocked this up in a week. Single length Merbau cover the 8x4m pergola floor which was previously an unsightly cracked concrete with a tiled add on.

A lick of paint on the pergola and in about a month a splash of oil on the deck and it will be awesome. If you're in the north western suburbs of Melbourne and want a top notch bloke who's got fantastic attention to detail, give Tom a buzz.

Here's some pics to show the work.

Before:
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d31/GMiladinovic/IMG_0108.jpg

During:
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d31/GMiladinovic/IMG_0039.jpg

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d31/GMiladinovic/IMG_0112.jpg

After:
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d31/GMiladinovic/IMG_0094.jpg
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d31/GMiladinovic/IMG_0093.jpg
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d31/GMiladinovic/IMG_0110.jpg

Next is the final stage which is the courtyard area directly adjacent to the pergola. That is going to be a sizeable job and need to finalise the design and get some quotes.

Very nice!! Looks like they did a great job.
What are you thinking with the courtyard?

o i cant see the pics! im sure it looks great tho

Really want to update this thread with the extra work that's taken place over the past 12 months but bloody photo bucket changing their hosting terms for 3rd party image linking has me stuffed.

How are others linking photos now for thread updates?

You can post directly from Homeone now
Just upload and away you go

Ok, so the last update in June last year was when we covered the cracked concrete and tiled pergola floor with the Merbau decking.

Next step was to replace the colour bond roof of the pergola as we wanted to let some more light in to the space and also freshen the colour up from the old cream to a grey which is in keeping withe our colour scheme.



Removing the roof also made it a lot quicker to apply a new coat of paint to the timber.

Original colour was mission brown and heritage green which made the space dark so a light grey colour brightened it up.

Updated picture of the grass and hedging which has come a long way in the 18 months since they were planted



We had one last major space in the back yard to renovate. We were tossing up between doing a large courtyard with inbuilt bench seating and a pizza oven and some shade cloth or potentially putting a pool in.

Space in question

Decision was made to put in a pool. After a lot of research, we decided to go with a fibreglass shell by Leisure Pools. We went the Acclaim model which gives us a large splash deck and fit the space the best.

Starting the dig.


Dig complete and base laid.



Quick crane lift over the house and in she goes.... like a glove.



This was all done in the space of 2 days. Another couple of days for the plumbing and fitting off of the pool equipment and we were ready to concrete.

Boys hard at work



After the concrete was laid, had to wait 6 weeks for it to cure fully before getting the paving done.


Not bad for one weeks work.

Chose to go with a grey granite paver. Here's the coping being put into position.


Just about done.



It's all about the lighting. Looking back at the space when we started this project nearly 18 months ago, it's amazing to see how far it's come.

Wow. It looks incredible. What a great choice you've made with the pool shape, size, colour and the pavers too. Can i re-do mine and have what you've got??

Thanks Cat. It's been hundreds of hours of work and just as many hours researching and designing different options.

Bit more of an update now. So the paving has been completed and the next steps were to complete the pool fencing. I really want this to feel like a bit of an oasis and wanted a touch of warmth to the granite pavers. So I decided to build out a merbau slatted screen to cover the old fence. This was really a labour of love. 260+ 1.8m slats that were stained front, back and top and bottom. Along with the cypress posts.

First step was to dig the post holes and placing the posts. 11 in total for 10 panels of screening


Then it was time to stain the slats. Went with Cutek Extreme which I'm hoping will only need to be reapplied once every 2-3 years.


In order to fix the slats to the posts, I bought the Whites Screen-up. Once I fixed the black channels to the posts, it was then simply a case of cutting the slats to size, then sliding them down. I cut 4mm spacers that are used for decking spacers, to put between the slats as the standard spacers that come with the Whites are either 20mm of 10mm and I wanted a more closed look.

First panel taking shape



1 down, 9 to go


Starting to take shape


I ended up being about 15 slats short so I have placed larger spacers at the bottom along the longer side. I will go back and fix this before putting a second coat of stain on.

All finished... turned out better than I imagined.

Last step before being able to sit back and fully relax is to put in the glass fence along the other sides. Decided to give this a crack as as DIY project so bought the glass from a trade shop up in QLD and got it freighted down to Melbourne and got cracking.

Didn't take a heap of photos of doing this because hey, it's glass, it's clear, it doesn't really show up that well in pictures.



One thing you need if you're going to do this is muscles. These panels are NOT light. Hired a core driller from Kennards to cut out the 24 cores needed for the spigots. Then cut 50mm bits of wood to space the bottom and then cut 1800mm posts with slats in them to get the panels square before filling the cores with cement.



I have one final thing to do which is install some downwards facing baton lights on the posts to give a bit of lighting for that area when it's dark but other than that, we've got a finished back yard.







Bring on summer!

Having three weeks off over the Christmas and New Years period motivated me to tackle the next phase of the renovations which was the ugly upstairs deck. The combo of old faded shade cloth with cracked pine decking and the green paint wasn't doing it for me. I had previously tried to clean the boards to make it a bit better but still wasn't a nice space to be.


Demolition was super quick and took all of an hour to rip up the screen and all the old boards. What we found underneath was a decent amount of dry rot in one of the support beams. Luckily the beams were massive and even with cutting out the damaged bit, there was still ~170mm of good timber left. We patched it up and put an additional cross beam in to provide additional support.




Keeping with the Merbau theme, I got 140mm boards delivered and stained them with the same Cutec extreme which I'd done the screening around the pool. ~500 screws later, this was the result.



This deck looks directly into the neighbours backyard so putting up some privacy screen was needed. I wanted a bit of a break from the timber so bought some block out screen and played around with a few designs before settling on this final setup.



The finishing touch was to put a bar top on the side facing the pool with some wire balustrading.



All we need now is a couple of outdoor stools and we can sit up here watching the kids splash about for the rest of summer.

Superb

wow that looks amazing!!!!

Hi there.
You need to create your own thread and post this question elsewhere. It's rather rude to hijack a thread like gary's. If you wish to ask him a question you can also private message.

I hope you find those answers and advice.

it is amazing!!! u r truely a superman!