Special Post -- The Yard In Progress

So for those of you who had seen the house from the beginning stages, you knew the disaster that was the yard. we bought in the winter so there were no leaves or trees or bushes, just twigs and branches. When May hit, it was a whole different story back there. I have no pictures of the before work during spring with all the trees and such, only the first picture from when we purchased. Since then I've tried to take pictures of the stages. This whole week was basically dedicated to yard work, delivery of patio things, learning about and ordering giant 4 ton trash things that take up whole driveways and basically realizing that yard work is NO JOKE. Here we go:

This was the first picture. Covered in english Ivy, you couldn't even see the hill or any of the firepit area in the bottom corner. 

This was the area near the door -- there was a rotten wood deck and two large trees that should have been bushes.

here's a picture from behind that show the two large trees! 

first we removed all of the english ivy -- deep roots. a tiller couldn't do it because the roots were too thick. hand pulled those suckers.

another shot of the yard cleared. even from the first picture to this one it looked like a lot had been done.

then we had to remove this bush that flowered and the rotten wood. also the silver hanging thing will go too but as you saw during the bbq it is still there.

flowering bush gone. thank you chainsaw.

next to go were the big trees.

big trees gone!

let's take a moment to remember what that looked like with trees.

and now without trees. also this is where the leveling and digging began to outline where the two tier patio would go.

raking, digging and leveling

then with some serious help from sketchy's uncle we were able to start building the framing. the framing will be removed once the stones are placed and the stone wall will be set in place of the framing.

more framing.

completely framed

completely framed plus one level of brick

brick still needs to be set straight and sealed

so now that we've seen how far we've come, here's the vision (slightly, not exact obviously):

the area circled in red is a neat bar situation where the lower tier is where the stools would go. if we look here:

That's what we've designed this top level for. we're going to put a 3.5 foot wall up with the grill IN the wall and make that a counter space. the stools will be on the lower level making it into a nice square bar like that in the nice picture above.

further plans are as such. we'll put in stairs of course to get to the lower level, there will be pretty patio furniture and all of the lower level will have pavers as well, a little firepit will be where the rounded part is (that's why it's rounded -- to complement the circle stone firepit) and we'll have an opening and stairs going down beyond the firepit. the rest of the framing will become brick walls as the border. 

All the brick is around the corner of the house, we just have to put it together, which we can do leisurely and stress-free now that the engagement situation is over. 

We also had a lot of help from sketchy's cousins lisa and nilesh!

Can't wait for end of summer and early fall to just enjoy this space. AND get it fenced so the doggies can enjoy the space too. Our goal is end of summer. If we get it done we're going to do a lobster boil/crab feast to celebrate the yard being done!