We've been in our house now for just over two years, and to be honest have done quite a bit of work transforming it into a place we love that suits us as a family. We've completely overhauled the kitchen (including basically everything in the kitchen minus new flooring) and the upstairs bathroom, as well as redecorating every single room, re-flooring all of the upstairs and creating a nursery and playroom.
Whilst the main focus of our home was to make it ready indoors for a family, we realised that we had kind of let the garden fall behind. But we're now finally there with it.
Because of our somewhat limited English summers, we didn't really want to spend a fortune on the garden but wanted to try and make it as child friendly and safe as possible.
We had a £1,000 budget, and I think we stuck to it pretty well, with a little help from family. (you can see some before shots, in this garden post!)
So what did we do?
Our first step was transforming the concrete base that takes up half of our garden space. This originally help a garden shed (that was falling down and was propped up for the last two years with a very large tire) and a large tin garage. The garage came down a few months after we moved into the house as we both agreed it was a waste of space and wasn't needed. We replaced our shed with this one, which is much bigger, and painted it dark to match our fences. Actually whilst I mention the fences, this was really the very first thing I started to do. I used a dark brown to paint all of out surrounding fences and I can't tell you how much of a difference it instantly made to the garden. Yes it took an absolute age to to but was so worth it!
Anyway back to that concrete base. We decided we wanted to create a patio area for our table and chairs, and chose to deck the area. The decking covers an entire concrete slab, and Dann spent several hours drilling into it for create the base. He also had to make a trap door as we have a drain cover in the decking area that we need to have access too! I must admit it was handy having a hands on guy to do all this! Once the decking was down, I painted it the most amazing blue/green colour from Valspar in Zen. The original plan was dark brown, but I fell head over heels for this colour and I really think it makes the area so so nice. It's held i's colour beautifully for the last few weeks too so I'm pretty darn happy.
We finished off our decking and re-edged our grass with gravel to make some pretty borders that will eventually be covered in flower bots as we grow our collection. The two by our patio contain rose bushes and are from Homesense.
I also refurbished our patio furniture that was given to us from Dann's parents as they've bought a new seating area. A couple of coats of the dark brown and it's looking as good as new!
Probably the hardest part of the renovation was the back raised flower bed. The previous owners had kind of boshed it together with well pretty poor materials and it was falling apart. We tore down the whole lots and rebuilt using stacked sleepers, and lots of new plants. A couple of months down the line and the plants are starting to fill out and take shape in their new home, with plenty of them being bee-friendly too! Also I'm super proud that my hydrangea is coming back around as this is it's second relocation and it seemed like it was on it's last legs, but it's blooming away happily - though I could have sworn it was blue last time it flowered!
We still have a little more to do, including getting wood chipping down by the shed and Henry's wooden wendy house - which was a gift from his Ninny, and pained by me! I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty darn pleased with his little striped house, and he's already been inside it too!
Fence Paint: £20
Decking: £350
Decking Paint: £35
Gravel: £35
Sleepers: £90
Plants: £70
Shed: £220
Total: £820
You can see some of the details from our garden decorating in this post also!!
And yes, Henry helped me with the weeding of the flowerbed... by eating the soil!! Boys eh?!?
