Our yard: the final product

Thank you for being so patient. As, promised, here are photos of our yard - the "after". As a refresher, here is the layout of our yard "before": an old fence, the yard was not maximized to it's full potential, and we had to park our two cars in tandem, which just created headaches.

So if you are new in the past few days (are there new people in the past few days?), this is what we did: we needed a new fence, wanted to increase the size of our yard, and wanted to add a parking pad. So we did that. We hired out the fence part, since we wanted it to look reallllll classy. But Hubby, and his brother, and then his dad - well they did the driveway part. It would have taken us more than one weekend to check that off the list with only Hubby workin' away.

So here are what those funny drawings look like, in real life.

This is on the right side of the house. The small deck-like-thing comes off our kitchen, but wasn't enough room to hold our grill or an outdoor dining table. Next spring, we will plant a few hydrangea bushes along the side of our house - in that planting bed, above. You might notice the small stump - we had a weed-tree there (which was just a weed that was overgrown and grew into a mini tree). Hubby chopped that down over the summer, but we never got around to planting anything in it's place.

We removed the old fence, and extended our yard, right, to our property line - the rock wall. Previously, we had a small path between the fence and the rock wall, which was basically unusable yard. We also decided to install a gate on this side of our yard, so we could bring wheelbarrows and lawn mowers around to the front. The old set-up only had a fence on the other side of the house. Manageable, but not ideal.

This photo above is actually a great shot - you can see right where the fence used to be, based on the line in our crappy grass (thanks in part to poor drainage, and to our dog). By pushing the fence out, we gained roughly 2 to 3 feet of space, down the entire length of the fence. Next summer, we will rip out all this grass and install a patio area - which will hold our grill, a dining area, and perhaps even a small sitting area with our fire pit.

Hubby's grill used to be right up against the old fence, on that rectangular stone pad. The side yard immediately feels more spacious. We installed a privacy fence here, so once we have our dining area set, we have some separation between our eating area and the neighbors.

So just picture it - next summer - outdoor dining! Woot! This whole area, right up to the shed, will be hardscape.

But now let's walk around to the left side of the yard, shall we? On this side, we had to push the existing fence back, into the yard, to accommodate the addition of the parking pad. From the photo above, you can also see the old post-and-beam fence we are starting to replace. The old fence is in much better shape on this side of the yard, so for now, it will stay. Our new fancy fence was custom built (in New England tradition), which means it was too pricey to replace the whole yard at once. We are still debating - do we eventually go with the picket style, and leave the privacy fence for just the dining area? Or do we continue the privacy fence down the length of the property - even though our neighbor's yard is really quite well kept (and we like them a lot).  We'll see, I guess.

But back to what we DID. As I said, we pushed the fence into the yard, and had to add a couple lengths, in order to accommodate our new parking area. Our existing driveway is right on our property line, and the old fence didn't leave enough room for a side-by-side parking area. But the back of our house is more narrow than the front, so we did have enough room, once we extended the area. (To understand the footprint of our house, visit this post.)

The whole area is bordered by gray cobblestone and the parking pad is filled with a 3/4" crushed gray stone (basically the cobble stone, but crushed). Hubby and his brother took one whole day to pull up the grass and level the area, prepping it for the stone. And then Hubby and his dad took one full day to lay the cobblestone and fill the area in with rock.

So depending on where in the country you live - you might be thinking, "Seriously, rock? Why didn't they just pour asphalt?" Well that's a good question. It's a few reasons, really. First, the rock is less permanent. You probably noticed we do not have a garage. If we decide to stay in this house long term, it might be nice to eventually build a garage, and it will be much easier to take up a rock parking area, than to pull up an asphalt driveway. Second, for whatever reason, you see rock parking areas a lot in New England. I think because it looks "vintage" and "charming". At least two or three neighbors all have similar set-ups. And yes, it might be a bit more work to shovel/snow blow in the winter time, but since we are parking here, most of the rock will be covered by cars, anyways. And three - we could do it ourselves. All we needed was the rock to be delivered, and two days later, bam! We have parking.

Here you can see the transition between the existing single-car-wide driveway, and the new parking pad. Do you see how our house "goes in" a bit over here? (That window is our master bedroom.) Because of this design, we were able to fit side-by-side parking here. If our house ran straight down the length, from the widest most part, we would not have had enough space to accommodate this fancy new parking area.

So there you have it. Our new fence and our new parking pad. Hubby said this was probably the most work of any one project we have done to date. And we have done our fair share of overhauling around these parts. (For more of our house, and some of the projects we have tackled, visit here.) But now that snow's a-comin', this will be infinitely more convenient. Plus, I look forward to finishing the job in the spring, and adding the patio area.

For the first two posts on this yard project - visit here and here.