Ok, as if the kitchen remodel wasn’t enough, now we are tearing out the back yard and making it a more inviting and livable space. We are putting in a block patio with a small tiered fountain on one corner and we also decided to improve the flower beds and convert our existing patio into a deck.

Here are some “before” shots of the patio area at the far end of our yard, the flower beds along the house, and the existing patio that we are going to convert into a deck.

(click thumbnails to enlarge image)

First off we had to remove the dilapidated old flower bed in the corner and remove the old dirt.

Then we cut the grass with a rented sod cutter. This was used to cut down below the grass and easily remove the grass in big 12″ to 18″ pieces. We did this for the patio area and the extended flower beds as well.

 

After removing the sod we had to remove the small tree roots and layers of dirt to get down to the final depth. I opted to use the sod cutter twice again as it cuts a uniform 2″ depth on each pass, then all you do is scoop out the loose dirt. We used the loose dirt from the patio excavation to fill in the widened flower beds.

The sod cutter only get so close to the fence, shed, etc.  so we had to go around with a pick to remove dirt to the level of the rest of the pad

Moving the flower beds out also meant we had to move the sprinkler heads out to the new edge of the grass