Backyard Before and After

THE RAVENNA HOUSE After a long, long backyard renovation, we are finally done!  And I'm really excited to show you the 'after' pictures.  But first, let's look back to a year ago:

Pretty awful, right?!  I'm a little embarrassed to even show you guys those 'before' pictures, but that's what it really looked like while our attention was focused on the interior renovation.  Oh so messy and wild!  After a good 6 months of work, here's what the backyard looks like now:

We did a lot of work back here.  First we tore down the unstable garage, removed quite a few trees, laid a patio, fenced the yard, built a shed, and finally installed the gravel path and landscaping.  You may have noticed the patio is outside the fence.  The patio doubles as overflow parking for guests so we decided to only fence in the yard area--a compromise to allow a fully fenced space for little legs to run.  Unfortunately we did a lot of work during the winter, meaning we fought with the rain over the colder Seattle months.  But we lucked out with a couple nice Spring days this month to lay the sod.

We are absolutely loving having a space to play outside, even if it is small.  Wilder likes to run around in the grass and take care of the plants - or should I say stomp around in them?  He often goes into the shed and picks out a couple of tools to "fix" stuff with.

He's a pretty special little guy, that one!  Those Timberland boots (aka his "work boots") have been glued to his feet!

Oh and lest I forget our other boy, Bubba is pretty satisfied with the new backyard too.  He likes to run around in the grass and bark - I'm pretty sure he's just expressing his excitement to be outside without a leash!

What do you think...do you like the new backyard?  Please tell me you think it looks better than it did a year ago!

xoxo

-Cathy