Our finished backyard and gate

Before and afters . The before are on the left and the after are on the right. What a difference, right? So clean and the gate is my very favorite part. No more make shift gate. This new baby is sturdy and pretty. We even added a latch to the house to hold the gate open if we want to. It ended up taking about 18 hours to do the whole project and most of those were my hubby working alone while I cut kids hair, did laundry, etc. I felt a little useless the last day but I did help a bunch on the gate. The post of brick is all him. I love it. Best of all it is done!

Now to convince myself not to take on any new projects before we leave fore vacation and my upcoming surgery. It's so hard but I am loving living with all of our hard work. For now I am making caddy's for cleaning supplies. Spring cleaning the house and getting ready for some time off. 

The brick project continued.

Well two days of brick work and we aren't quite done. We have about 5 hours to go and that is to finish up 19 more bricks, a post we are adding for the gate and to get the new gate made an hung. Here are a few more during pictures. The gate is gone! It's already better but we have to build the new one so the utility people can get to our meters. Hoping to get done on Saturday since we have a packed week.

Never a dull moment

We had a free Saturday after some cancelled plans. We were sitting on the couch drinking coffee at 7 this morning when we decided that is would be a great day to work on our sprinklers. Well, sprinklers turned into a much bigger project. We have a wall in our backyard that looks unfinished. We have been talking for 5 years about adding brick to the top. Do we know how to lay bricks? Nope but I am telling you with YouTube you can learn anything. A few hours shopping and $150 later we started a big project.
As soon as we got home I couldn't wait to get the wind damaged gate out. We added a cute little gate when we moved in but the first good wind came along and ripped it to shreds. We had an old crib sitting on the side of the house waiting to go in the trash, We were in a bind so the crib became our "temporary" gate that has been there for 4 years or so.
We are 4 hours in so far and we still have about 4 or 5 to go to finish the brick, new gate and maybe we will work on those darn sprinklers:).
Here are a few before and during pictures. Ignore the grass/weeds. We have tried everything even ground sterilizer and can't kill it. We are looking into new ideas for killing the grass from hell. I finally told my hubby that if we tried to make more of it and sell it as unkillable it would finally die since we had a purpose for it. Finished picture will be up soon but doesn't it look awesome already?

Our main backyard as soon as you walk out the back door. The unfinished wall and grass from hell. 

The side of our house. I honestly can't believe I am sharing this picture. It is so grass and I hate this area. 

Our beautiful gate. 

2000 pounds of supplies. My van was low riding. 

The first section DONE! I keep finding reasons to walk past the back door and look at it. I can't wait to finish it and get that grass out of there.