The four scariest words....
That a homeowner can utter are, "Love, let's remodel this!" Actually, we have been doing a remodel on the back yard this month. Surprisingly, it has been almost painless--if you discount the scraped shins, and sore shoulders. Oh, and the dirt & mud...

Here's what we've been up to: Our house had a wooden deck when we bought it. It was a homebrew deck, built by the prior owner, for whom carpentry was not his strong suit! Over the 3 yrs we have lived here, the deck has deteriorated to the point both Dave & I were hating it. Boards were warped, the railings were falling apart--losing spindles & topcaps, and wobbling like a Weeble, and the steps had been rebuilt at least twice.

So just before Mother's Day last weekend, somewhat on the spur of the moment, Dave took the drill and started unscrewing the decking. Partly this was due to the necessity to clear space for the storm shelter we are getting. Work went pretty quickly, and soon Dave had the south part of the deck almost cleared.


Next day we decided to continue clearing decking away and removed about 1/3 ofthe west side.


Notice the large pile of debris and wood? That's just part of what was removed. We ended up giving away 2/3s of the good wood to one of Dave's coworkers, and kept some ourselves to make a box garden around the shelter once it is installed.

Since it never rains in Texas, we had all this lovely dry dirt. We have 3 kids...it didn't take long for them to discover the joys of playing in the dirt piles, and tracking as much as humanly possible into the house! This is Olivia after one particularly grubby session in the dirt!

We rapidly decided that the disaster potential for that much dirt far outweighed the cost of sod. So off to the grass farm we went. It took about 230sqft of sod to cover everything, but it did fit in place easily. It really does look a lot better now, all grassy & everything.



Now, all that is left to do is prep the north fence for removal for the Shelter folks to get their heavy equipment into our back yard, then finish out the deck by removing the remaining Weeble railing, scrub & restain the deck, and finally, build the garden tiers around the shelter. Whew! All this in the midst of a hot Texas spring/summer!
We must be insane...