Today I’m sharing our backyard before and after photos.
It’s been a while since I’ve shared any home content, and that is mostly because we have been decorating very, very slowly since we moved in a few years ago. (You can see our kitchen before+after photos here!).
We have been chipping away at our backyard ever since we moved in, and we finally decided to go ahead and finish things up this spring. I’ll walk through the progress below.
Our Backyard Before and After
This is what the backyard looked like when we bought the house in 2021. We decided to prioritize the entire inside of the house before we moved in, as we knew that once we moved in with our baby and toddler, it would be WAY harder to do any house projects. So, we waited on the backyard.
As we were finishing up inside renovations that summer, we cleared out all of the overgrown landscaping in the backyard. I’m sure we could have saved a few things, but I wanted a clean slate, lol.
A few months after that, we put in our first round of turf on the right side of the yard. We kept the same cement pad in place but took out all of the old pavers out.
We added the concrete pavers to break up the turf a little bit.
Originally, I thought I only wanted turf on one side of the yard. I planned to put a couple of big planter boxes with rocks around it on the other side. Then, the longer we lived in the space, the more we realized that we should have just done turf on that side too. We realized the yard would flow way better and that would give the girls some extra room to play too.
The following spring, we added turf to the other side too. We also put in this cutie lemon tree and hung a set of Costco string lights along the back fence.
At the time, I had a bunch of people ask me questions about our turf and how we decided to go that route. For us, it came down to two main factors: first, we didn’t want to have to worry about mowing in the back. Neither of us are big Yardwork Guys, so it was going to be a huge lift to maintain. Second, the girls both have sensitive skin, and I just knew if we had normal grass in the back that they wouldn’t play outside as much. Emmie is constantly complaining about her skin being itchy. I know grass is healthier and such, but we decided to choose the option that the girls would be happiest playing on. In my house, the more time they spend in the backyard, the better. The kind of turf we got has the “nontoxic” T Cool fill, so it’s not like they are getting the little black plastic beads all over them like at high school track practice. It is also the kind that you can cool off easily by hosing it down if needed. And–fast forward to now–the girls play outside a TON and I’m so glad we went this route. I can’t imagine another way.
The next thing we really needed was to add some shade. The backyard gets full sun the entire day, and it can get really hot in the summer. We ended up getting one of these pergola kits from Toja Grid. The kit comes with the hardware, brackets, and shade sail. We bought our own wood at Home Depot and used the kit to put it all together.
Overall, we’ve been happy with the pergola. It’s cute and does the job. The shade sail did get destroyed during “Hurricane” Hilary last summer which was no one’s fault but our own for not taking it down. Since the shade from Toja Grid was going to cost $300 to replace, we got a $50 Amazon knockoff instead. It doesn’t look nearly as good but will do the trick for now.
Around the same time we got the pergola up, we started looking around for an outdoor furniture set. We wanted a lounge set rather than a table and chairs because we wanted somewhere to chill while the kids played.
My sister’s sister-in-law Ashlyn posted this West Elm dupe set from Sam’s Club on her IG stories, and I ordered it almost immediately. We have been SO happy with this set. It’s made with Sunbrella upholstery that has held up amazingly well (going on two years now this spring).
After we got the pergola and furniture in place, we didn’t really touch the yard at all then for a couple of years.
This past January, we decided it was time to finally finish things up. The last thing we wanted to do was fill in the border around the turf. In keeping with the theme of low maintenance, we wanted to go really, really minimal with the landscaping.
We went to our local Moon Valley nursery and asked for help choosing a few different plant varieties. We told them we wanted them to be drought tolerant and low profile. The guy at Moon Valley helped us decide on a few little shrubs: blue chalk sticks, flax lily, and pink stripe New Zealand flax. We also grabbed a couple of bougainvillea plants for either side because my life’s ultimate dream has been to have bougainvillea in my backyard.
I am so happy with how they turned out, and I can safely (I think) say now that the plants are thriving! It’s been about two months, so I’m hopeful, lol.
We also got our rocks from Moon Valley. At first, we thought we were going to have to pay way more for the rocks. We had been in contact with a rock yard down here near our house. When we went to Moon Valley to pick out the plants, though, we saw that they had a few basic rock varieties in stock and for WAY cheaper than what the rock yard was quoting us. We purchased the rocks and plants all in one fell swoop and had the guys we hired pick them up for us.
At the same time, we decided to go ahead and finish up the front yard too. We needed to add concrete on either side of our driveway and ended up using the same guys who did the concrete to install all of the landscaping in the back too. It was a very exciting week, lol!
And then, of course, there’s the sauna. We have talked about buying a sauna for the backyard ever since we moved in but always assumed it would cost a million dollars. When we started talking about finishing up the backyard back in January, Tyler did a little browsing online and stumbled upon one that seemed actually doable for us: this 2 person wood barrel sauna from Costco. It was on sale that week, and after scouring the reviews about the brand, we decided to go for it!
The sauna arrived right after we finished up the landscaping. We had the guys put in a tiny concrete pad in the corner of the yard to set it up on. The sauna took Tyler about two days to assemble–not bad! I was a little nervous it would look obnoxious, but I think it is so cute. Very Scandinavian. We use it around 3 times a week, and it is amazing. I definitely recommend it.
I got these cute planters to put in front of the sauna from Wayfair. They each came in a set of 3, and I used the rest in the front yard to add a little life at the top of the driveway.
The playhouse was the girls’ Christmas present a couple of years ago–found on Amazon or Home Depot.
My herb garden is still going strong!! There is nothing, and I do mean nothing, more satisfying than walking outside to clip an herb for a recipe. TRUST ME. My dad got me one of these raised planter beds from Costco a few years ago, and I went and bought a second soon after that.
I really do love how everything turned out. It is–for the most part–all very simple, but it’s perfect for what our family needed right now.
Links:
2 Person Almost Heaven Sauna from Costco
Concrete planter set from Wayfair
White + black wooden playhouse (Amazon or Home Depot)
