Love, bubs and life on our little farm

So we have done all the hard yards on the paving of our back laundry courtyard and I can finally do some before and after shots.

The courtyard is a little fenced area that we inherited from the previous owners - it had coloured gravel down and little skanky dead garden beds around the edge. The clothes line was not set in the centre and there was a drain running across the centre that actually had 45 degree corner in it and did very little to move out all of the water that flows from our tank overflows on that side of the house. Consequently - it was hot and yukky underfoot in Summer and flooded and muddy in any wet times. Needless to say, I preferred to hang my washing out on the clothes horses on the back verandah.

During our work on the drains for all the yards - front, back and side, the laundry garden became the dumping zone and it became very messy. Not only that but a little brown tree snake moved in there and was constantly scaring us and trying to eat my lovely green tree frogs in front of me! So it was high time to spend some time on cleaning it up.




We ordered huge piles of soil, sand, roadbase and had a massive stack of our pavers of choice delivered. The driveway looked like a landscaping supply store!

We laid two different drains - a non-slotted pipe to move all the water from our drains further up that side of the house and then the black rigid drain that sits on top to catch the water from the courtyard itself. We moved out endless wheel barrows of clay soil to drop the level down to what was required for the paving. This was long and hard and complicated by endless rain. Sure, the rain made the clay soft enough to cut out but oh so heavy at the same time. Both Jase and I toned our arms nicely ;)





Jase built two large planter boxes for either side of the courtyard and we filled them with soil and mulch.

Next we moved in a bed of roadbase. We also paused at this point to have the house termite treated which included digging into our base - it slowed us down but was well worth it for the protection it will provide over the next 10 years. At this point it poured with rain but we had already booked all of the hire equipment we needed for the paving so we had to press on.

We dealt with ankle deep wet clay, puddles of water in our base and mud flying everywhere from the compacter. It was pretty bad!



We had to cut heaps of tiles which made the extremely heavy tile cutter worth hiring! We paved over the long weekend and had floodlights set up as we paved into the night. We had no one to help mind Elka so we tagged teamed and Elka also got to play in (and eat!) a lot of sand. I also had a big horse competition on at the same time which meant I was extra sore and tired. Finally at 9pm on the Monday night of the long weekend, we had finished the bulk of the paving.

I completed the job over the next week or so, evening up wonky pavers and sweeping in the gap sand. Finally we dug the hole for the clothesline and set it back in with concrete - its now dead in the centre and looks much better! The final step is to place polished black pebbles in the clothesline hole and to plant in the planter boxes. We are planning gardens of multi-levels - ie gradiating heights and the front plants will be "touch and smell" plants for Elka to play with.

It was not fun and a lot of hard work but we are very pleased with the result and it serves the purpose of being a great spot to hang out the clothes. Believe it or not, but far from putting us off paving we have two more paving jobs planned!