The Nest's Backyard Transformation

Our Transformation Of The Nest's Back Yard

When we first moved in, the back yard was pretty much nothing but dirt, covered by leaves, enclosed by a dillapitated fence. That is all that separates our yard from our neighbor's yard, and our dog from hers. Along the back fence, in somewhat better shape, stands of bamboo in both corners. Not the good kind of bamboo, but the invasive kind that's hard to control, and even harder to get rid of. The carriage house and a four foot tall, fairly new fence divides the yard from the driveway. A gate by the back door allows access outside of the yard. It is almost totally shaded by four tall oak trees, two along the old fence, and two along the new fence.

We get to know our neighbors on both sides fairly well. Pam shares the dillapitated fence with us. Our driveway and Dave and Rebecca's adjoin a row of four tall camphor trees, shared between us. In the back, by our gate, is an open area between the two driveways. We like to hang out in the back yard, but the more we do, the more we realize the fence is going to need replaced, and very soon. We talk about what it will take to do it and how we're going to do it. I don't know if Pam overheard us talking about it from time to time, or if the hole in the fence where the two dogs liked to stand and bark and growl at each other back and forth was the deciding factor, but as we're talking to Pam and watching it happen we get to talking about the fence. She offers to split the cost with us. We tell her we're planning on replacing it ourselves, not have a professional do it, and she says it's fine.

Before we can get to the back part we need to get rid of the bamboo stand first. That's more work than all the fence combined... At least it seems that way. I start by just cutting out what's in the way with the chain saw, but it leaves a HUGE pile of bamboo stalks lying in the yard, piled up along the new fence. Not to mention the dozens and dozens of little round stumps, dangerous and painful to walk on. It's good enough for now, but they will have to go, or the bamboo will just grow right back. Long story short, the old fence comes down and the new one goes up in a weekend, but the work continues well beyond that weekend. You can read more about it in the Backyard Fence segment.

I want to try to keep this section an introduction to all of the changes we've made to the backyard over the years, with some before and after type pictures to remind us where we started. We bought the house in September of 2014, replaced the fence in March of 2015. We put the shed in sometime after that. Ann wanted it behind the carriage house but having just finished getting rid of the rest of the bamboo from replacing the fence, I didn't even want to thnk about taking out the bamboo in the other corner and having to repair or replace that section of fence too. It was quicker and easier at the time to just set it up between the big oak tree and the back corner of the house. Eventually I did manage to get that other stand of bamboo cut down though, around the end of June, and it exposed the fence in need of repair.

It also left us with another HUGE pile of bamboo to dispose of. When I say dispose of, I mean cut into four foot lengths, bundle, and put out to the curb for yard trash pickup. That dispose of didn't happen, at least, not all at once, and not completely. I ended up piling what was left against the back fence, and there it sat for over a year. There were more pressing matters than cleaning out the rest of the bamboo and fixing the fence. I fought with it to keep it from growing back. And fought with it. And fought with it. We enjoyed the back yard as much as we could with all that dirt, but even after several attempts to make it a place to relax, it wasn't. We had to do something to cover that dirt. Eventually the part of the yard that didn't get much shade started turning green, albeit more with weeds than anything else.

I started the garden railroad around Thanksgiving time, hoping to have it all up and running by Christmas, but that didn't happen. I had actually finished a wooden howe truss bridge, and trestle bents for it to sit on, around my birthday in January of 2016. That's as far as I got because once again, other things more important. No much else got done in the back yard until we decided to have the trees cut down. Then the concern was the shed and whether it would be in the way. Thinking it would be in the way and would need to move behind the garage, I figure it's a good time to get the rest of that bamboo that's keeping me from fixing the fence taken out. I'd need to notch a section of fence to clear a tree root, so it will have to wait for a full up repair.

Somewhere in all of this, I seem to remember the electric chain saw trigger switch broke, then I fixed it, and then it failed and I had to buy a new electric chain saw. It's now late June of 2016 as we prepare for the trees to come out. The trees came out just after the 4th of July. When they were grinding up the limbs and branches, we though to ask them to also take care of the bamboo, and they did. Good. We were really sick of looking at that huge pile of mess, and it was nice to watch someone else load it up and take it away without having to do anything else first just so they would. This exposed the area behind the garage and let me get in there to assess what needed done to finally fix that fence. The rest of the yard looks pretty well torn up from all the work and equipment running through it though...

Now the backyard is definitely nothing but dirt and sawdust. And now that the trees are gone in the middle of summer, we are having issues with the A/C keeping up. And so are the neighbors, who are also now complaining about the definite lack of shade. We never thought twice about how much shade those trees gave, until we had to do without it! We have to close off the front porch just so it's not 80° or more in the house when we get home from work every day. I really notice it in the garage, which now regularly gets over 90° every day without shade. I decide to try to put some of the radiant barrier backed styrofoam insulation up in the rafters that face the afternoon sun and see if it helps any. It takes some doing, but eventually I'm able to cut enough strips to finish that side. It seems to keep it cooler, but it still gets to 84° - 85° regularly.

The fact that it helped prompts us to try installing just some radiant barrier in the attic. Nick helps me and before we even get the side without shade done, we can already feel the difference. With just the first four foot wide strip stapled across the rafters, it blocks enough heat to where we actually feel comfortable. We're still sweating, but it doesn't feel like the sun is beating down on us directly. By the time we finish that side of the roof, it's still warm, but not oppressively hot as it was. We get the other side and the gable ends, and it really helps, except where we can't get. Over the porches. Both of the porches have shed roofs, and there is no way to get in there to do anything. It was all we could do to feed the new wiring through the opening from the attic and down the wall. About the only thing that will work is blown insulation, and even then, that opening is really small and the nozzle may not fit. We pretty much know we don't want to do it ourselves, and by we, I mean Nick.

We have a couple of companies come out to give us estimates and Ann finally chooses one. When the guys come out to do it, they think they're just doing the attic floor, not the porches. I have to explain to them just the porches, I don't want any in the attic because it already has the insulation bats between the joists and plywood over that and I don't want to have to take up the plywood or move insulation out of th way down the road if I do have to take out the plywood. I guess it went right over their heads, because they think they're done after just lightly dusting the attic, over the plywood, like I told them not to do. They couldn't have been up there five minutes, so I know I need to get up there and check. I grab my breathing mask and head up the ladder.

Looking all around the perimeter of the attic, I can see they've blown insulation over the plywood, but nowhere do I see any evidence that they've disturbed the radiant barrier or blown insulation over the porches. If they have, I certainly can't tell. Without a flashlight that is. I ask the guy if he has a flashlight and he hands me his phone? I tell him thanks, looking down on the back of the beadboard that makes up the ceiling of the porch below, tempted to drop his phone down there when I see no insulation whatsoever. I reiterate that I didn't want the insulation where they have it, but I do want the insulation down there, indicating the porch. He says okay. So they fire everything back up as I climb back down the ladder, waiting for my next adventure in the attic.

This time I take my flashlight with me, and I see plenty more insulation around the perimeter, but once I push it out of the way, I still can't see any insulation over the porches. I tell him to come look where I'm shining the light and illuminate the top of the porch ceiling, where there isn't any insulation, and tell him there where you still haven't managed to get any insulation. I further explain that these are shed roofs, and where the main roof over the attic stops, where they've been blowing all the insulation where I told them not to, is where the porch actually starts... I think now he gets it. I don't think English is his first language though. This time I stay up there and watch him do the work, but he has to go down to adjust the machine in their van correctly since it doesn't seem to be blowing enough insulation? Dunno. Once he does finally get it working, he puts a ton of it in over the back porch.

Nick says last he looked, it didn't look like there was any inulation over the front porch, even though I saw them blow it in and looked when they did it. Dunno. All I know is the A/C is able to keep up again, and with the front porch open to the rest of the house. After all that, we still just have dirt for a backyard, now baked by the sun. So really not inviting. They came out and ground the stumps a week or two later, and there's a funny story there. The guy shows up in what looks like a new company truck, with the big industrial sized stump grinder in tow. He tries backing it into place over the stump, but after a couple of failed tries, pulls back out and decides to just pull into the yard with it? So instead of just trying again to get it right, he gets the differential case of the truck stuck on top of the stump. WTF?

He gets out and looks and realizes he screwed up. He finally manages to rock it off the stump, then avoids it just enough with the axle to get the hitch stuck on the stump. I can't believe I'm actually seeing this... He rocks it back off the stump, only to try gassing it over the stump, more than a couple of times. At this point I'm trying very hard not to laugh at him and his stupidity. Last thing I want to do is piss him off before he grinds out the stumps. I think the only thing that helps me keep from laughing is knowing this is a company truck, not his, and how he's going to have to explain to his boss why a bunch of shit is bent and broken on the new truck. It really doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest, so I guess ignorance truly is bliss.

We didn't have to move the shed then, but it wasn't long after that we did move it though. I managed to get that stand of bamboo out before, but wasn't able to totally eliminate it. So before we could move it, I had to clean out all of the roots to keep it from growing back in this corner, and it took forever with a mattock, only able to clear several root bundles at a time before running out of steam. I was literally chopping the roots out of the ground, a little at a time. This time the bamboo shoots came right back up where they didn't get chopped out, compared to the other side where we never did get any new shoots, and were able to leave the roots to rot. It's a lot easier to get them out once they've been rotting for a year, but still stubborn even using tools.

The old fence is just leaning against the tree, where I left it when I first cleaned out the bamboo, and is all that is keeping the dogs from "escaping" that yard, so it needs to be fixed as soon as I can get everything squared away. I was able to use the spare fence panel we had left over from the other side to replace the worst section. It was a lot of work to clean out all of that bamboo when I did it, but I don't think the neighbors were quite prepared for all of it to come out, including the stand on their side of the property line. I told them I planned on taking it all out so it wouldn't grow back. Well, at least it didn't grow back on our side of the fence, once I took the roots out that is. I have to continually trim it back from growing over the fence from their side now though.

The next step was to level the ground and prepare the base for the shed floor. Originally we had dug out and set in place over a dozen of the 8" square half concrete blocks, laid out a 2x4 grid frame of joists, then covered it with a ¾" plywood floor for it to sit on when we first put it together. Now we have to somehow lift the entire thing off of the floor, and move it from one corner of the yard to the opposite one, without it falling apart on us. Our plan is to skid it over using the extra 4x4s from the fence work we've done. First we need to repeat digging and setting in the blocks to support the floor and frame. This is almost as difficult as digging out all those bamboo rotts, except this time, it's oak tree roots. With all the blocks in place and all of it level, it's time to move the shed!

Once we get it moving, it goes smoothly, only having to stop to move and reposition the 4x4s. The hardest part is getting the thing lifted onto the 4x4s to begin with. When all is said and done, I'm thinking we should have put it closer to the garage, to have room to (eventually) curve the railroad track behind it, and Ann is ready to kill me... Not a problem, just need to add another row of blocks one joist away from the edge and move everything over. I tell her it can wait, but end up just digging another row of blocks in place and move it over onto them. It's been there ever since, and now the 10' diameter track curves and fits nicely behind it, but that's another story you can read more about in the Railroad section.

We've long since since replaced the window in the side of the carriage house with a door. We put in a patio outside of it using surplus pavers we bought from a closeout shop up in Leesburg. The hardest part of that was digging out ALL THE ROOTS. Just when you think you have it smooth and level, another root. And as you pull it, it uncvoers more roots, and tears up what you've already tamped. Even the puppy is helping rip out the roots. It's comical listening to him whine at it as he tries to rip it out of the ground. When he finally find one too big, he refuses to give up. He finally manages to snap one end of it and I finally manage to get it all level and tamped and ready for pavers.

I've been struggling with the paver pattern on the computer, one takes too many of one type, another too many of another type. I finally find one that will work with just a few pavers left over if I alter the dimensions smaller. Ann's okay with it and helps me by grabbing the pavers I need while I set them in place following my pattern print out. There are three types, let's call them ½x½ (A), ½x1 (B), and 1x1 (C) where 1 represents the actual length of a full sized side. In our case, roughly ten inches. It seems the (B) style pavers have a tendency to want to crack along the middle, and when they do, I swap them with a good one. That is, until I know I'll be out of them if I swap any more of them. I make some quick changes in the pattern along the edge where it won't be as noticable to handle to it.

We have another set of pavers left over, but they're not the same size as the other ones we used for the patio. Ann asks if we can use those for a walkway from the back door to the patio, so I come up with a pattern that uses what we have and looks kind of like train tracks. If we had used gravel around and between the pavers that represented the ties instead of pavers, it really would have looked like train tracks. But at least we'll know, just like the giant railroad crossing crossbucks I built into the patio pattern. Now all I have to do is get all the roots out of the way and level and tamp it. We lay the pavers starting from the patio and working our way toward the house. It was very difficult to get everything level by the back porch, and it still wants to run downhill toward the gate, but the path way is done and now we can order the sod.

Ann ordered three pallets of sod. And when they arrived, we laid three all three with none to spare... We probably could have used another half pallet, but for now it covers most of the dirt, and the backyard is green for the first time since we bought the house! We decide to put in some raised beds to help with the areas where there is no sod. It does really well until we over water it, just like we did at the other house. Next thing we know, there are a ton of mushrooms growing everywhere. Between the stress on the roots from the fungus and the constant rip roaring traffic of the dogs tearing it up, it didn't stand a chance. So after nearly a year, we're back to nothing but dirt pretty much everywhere the railroad tracks didn't keep the dogs from running around and digging and tearing it up.

The solution? Artificial turf... So welcome to our putting green! All that's missing is the windmill, the bumpers, and the cup! But I've left out a good chunk of the story. I haven't gotten to the best part yet... I had to tear out everything I had already done on the railroad for the trees to come down. I had all the splined roadbed sections just sitting by the garage, along with all the trestle bents, still flimsily connected together, until the dogs destroyed them too that is. Eventually I moved them over along the fence along with the concrete blocks I had used to stage the bridge, in anticipation of their installation once again. Shortly after the sod went in, I begin to reinstall the upper loop of track.

The motivation? Ann and Nick found some garden scale trains at the flea market. They didn't buy any of it since they didn't know if it was a good deal or not. So I tag along as we head back over to have a look. There are three "sets" in all, none of them come with track or transformer though. They are asking a lot for each set, plus there's a wood bridge that I really didn't want, but I ask them how much for the lot anyway. The lot price is much better and I buy the whole kit and kaboodle. So now I have three more 4-6-0 steam engines, some more freight cars, and several more passenger cars. Two of the engines are maroon Santa Fe, but with only a single maroon passenger car between them, I know I'll need more. The third engine is one like the fancy one I bought Ann for Christmas, back when we first started our garden pike at the old house. With all the new toys, we're going to need track to run them on.

At first, it's just the upper loop, but this time the plan is different. Instead of being able to run the loops parallel to themselves and the garage, we'll need to curve away from the garage towards the fence. Ann is worried there won't be enough room to run the track that close to the walkway and the patio. I rethink the plan and decide to have the bridge span what may eventually become the water feature, but will now be where the lower loop crosses under the upper loop. The upper loop comes back to meet itself, running parallel and downhill along the fence. It will curve around the back corner, still continuing downhill along the back fence toward the shed. It will curve around behind the shed and come out between the garage and the shed back toward the other fence, then curve around to become the lower loop.

We've slowly put in raised garden beds since then, a few here and a few there. The railroad is in too, but more work has been stalled by the rennovation of the kitchen, itself almost complete as of this update. The countertops get installed June of 2018.

More to come, so stay tuned...

The finished product will hopefully be well worth the effort and all the headaches.