One Room Challenge Fall 2018: Week One

It’s that time again!

For those of you who aren’t familiar, the One Room Challenge is a biannual event where a group of designers and guest participants work to finish a space in 6 weeks. I love seeing what everyone else does and I’ve been following along for a while but just participated for the first time last Fall (check out our finished space here) and again in the Spring (yeah, we didn’t finish that one).

So what space are we doing now? Is it the still yet to be finish master bedroom? The master bathroom that is still down to the studs and subfloor almost a year later? Of course not! Those spaces would make way too much sense.

DRUM ROLL, PLEASE.

TA-DA!

We are doing something about the area behind our garage that I have recently referred to as the “Garbage Yard.”

The first couple of pictures were taken a few weeks ago. Here’s a more recent one. I can’t decide if it’s better or worse.

But wait! That’s not all!

Yep, we’re also tackling the walkway between our house and our neighbor’s house. You can actually see this area from the street and it is ROUGH. We made an attempt a couple of years ago to make it a little nicer but things have gone downhill since and it looks worse now than it did then. Whoops.

So, let’s break it down shall we?

Patio (behind garage)

I want to start this part of the post with a GIANT disclaimer. Like, take out a billboard or tattoo it to your forehead kind of thing. Eventually, we will continue our existing deck into this area and the patio we’re putting in now won’t be there anymore. So why bother, right? This area is such wasted space right now and we’d really like to be able to use it. Decking is just out of the budget right now but we don’t want to leave it as-is because we’re just not keeping up with it. There’s some grass but it’s mostly just weeds and dirt so it’s not a very appealing place to put patio furniture as it stands now. So, we will be putting down a crushed gravel patio but we are not doing it the way we would if it was a permanent space, This means we aren’t digging down other than by the brick walkway, we aren’t compacting the ground, and we aren’t using a sand base. Instead we’re just clearing, raking, laying landscape fabric, and putting down rock. When we’re ready to build the deck over here we’ll just build right over the gravel, digging where we need to for the posts.

So, with all of that out of the way here’s our to-do list for the patio. We actually got started over the weekend which is great because we don’t have much time (if any) to work this weekend.

-Clean out junk – in progress
–Clear ground – pull weeds and small trees, move large stones, rake out area – done but we’ll want to do anything rake of the soil before we put down landscape fabric
-Dig out next to bricks to allow space for gravel
-Weed current brick walkway
-Lay extra bricks to complete existing brick walkway
-Order gravel to have delivered
-Pressure wash siding and brick
-Build/Stain adirondack kits (purchased at Home Depot during End of Season clearance)
-Remove rust from outdoor sectional
-Build/stain outdoor console table
-Hang cafe lights
-Finish existing privacy screen? (Not sure on this one)
-Decorate/Style space

Walkway (beside garage)

-Clear junk
-Rake out/remove existing mulch
-Remove weeds
-Remove monkey grass that has regrown
-Transplant plum trees (not enough light in current location)
-Clean up/remove surrounding foilage
-Pressure wash
-DIY large concrete pavers
-DIY concrete pad for trash/yard waste containers
-Build/Stain privacy screen for trash/yard waste containers
-Hang cafe lights? (Might look nice to have some here, too)
-Fill in with gravel

****

Here’s what the patio area looked like after Saturday with the area mostly cleared and the additions to the existing brick walkway done (bricks will be pulled up before adding the deck in the future so we didn’t add the appropriate base for the two new sections we put down – to be fair, the existing bricks weren’t done properly by whoever installed them either).

The patio area is the bigger space but honestly it should be relatively smooth sailing from here on out (knock on wood). The walkway is definitely going to be the bigger challenge for us with the DIY pavers and finding time to build a screen in front of our bright green waste containers.

Let’s do this!

Make sure you check out what the other guest participants are up to by clicking here.