He Started With This Mound Of Dirt. For 200 Dollars He Created A Backyard Oasis And Saved Himself THOUSANDS!

I have spent the better part of the past year working on this little project for the house.

It’s nothing like this but it is something that I chip at here and there when I get the time. My wife and I have an extra room in the house and we have been spending time turning it into a replica of an old time movie theater. The green thumb stuff is a little bit beyond my reach.

For many people managing the inside of the house is enough work. It can take up all your free time to just keep your home tidy and clean. But when you have a yard space, you’re also required to keep that up – especially if your neighbors do it. While some people turn to landscapers to do the heavy lifting, others enjoy the yard work.

But when things get out of hand and your backyard starts looking like a “weed garden,” a little DIY love is just what the doctor ordered. Here’s how one person transformed their backyard from “Meh” into “OMG.”

As they write on HomeTalk.com: “One of the main attractions to buying our condo was that it actually has a fenced in patio and small yard. There is a sizable concrete slab sitting area, which is in dire need of stripping and re-painting (which is another project for another week) and this small 8’x12′ area shown above.”

Although the space was included, it needed a lot of work. Weeds were sprouting everywhere and the place was just a dirt plot.

To get started, they removed all the weeds. Even with this simple, yet laborious task completed, the space looked transformed. But the DIY blogger wasn’t done yet. There was more to do to make the backyard space a place they’d want to enjoy.

“Using a hand tiller, we began breaking up the soil, trying to pull of the weeds out by the root, and getting rid of the excess dirt. Turns out our soil is pretty full of clay and it was quite difficult to break up,” the blogger shared on HomeTalk.com.

After leveling out the dirt, the blogger sprayed weed killer and a laid out landscape fabric. This ensured the weeds would not come back – at least not easily.

Next, they put leveling sand over the landscape fabric to both hide it and make it more level. Plus this gave the pavers some more grip.

“Once the pavers were placed where I wanted them (which involved a lot of me moving things 1″ to the left, then back 1/2″ to the right, etc), we filled put down a layer of mulch between them all. After that, we poured bags of landscaping rock on top of the mulch, to fill in the gaps between the pavers,” they shared on HomeTalk.com.

With that, the “weed garden” became a useable space that is gorgeous and inviting. A year after completing the project, the DIY blogger shared an update including a new photo. Here’s what they shared on HomeTalk.com:

“It’s been nearly a year since we redid our back patio space… This picture is with literally almost no maintenance over the past year (besides the new plants I just added last week!) When I said we wanted something more manageable and functional, I wasn’t kidding… and this totally fit the bill. You can see we never got around to adding more rocks, so some of the pavers are still a bit high (though we are planning to this weekend, I wanted to show a true “1 year later” picture beforehand).”