Wednesday 11 September 2013

Landscaping I

It’s been a crazy time since we took handover of the house. Building the house now seems like the easy part!

We seriously underestimated the amount of landscaping that would be required. Our block is 800sqm and we have to find something to do with the remaining ~550sqm. An absolute legion of earthwork crews have totally decimated the hard work that previous owners have put into the land over the past 60 or so years.

We set off to prioritise the many projects that would be required and ended up with the following list (to start with):

  1. Construct backyard fence, with 1m high retaining wall to reduce slope in backyard
  2. Construct concrete steps to access backyard and finish retaining wall
  3. Construct retaining wall fence and a gate for pool and general safety
    (Reason: retaining walls up to 2m in height, pool regulations)
  4. Swimming Pool
    (Reason: only access to backyard via neighbours driveway will not be available for much longer)
  5. Turf the backyard
  6. Piers for 60sqm deck
    (Reason: machinery access will be problematic once we have a driveway)
  7. Front boundary fence and retaining walls
    (Reason: security and should be done before driveway)
  8. Driveway
    (Reason: we’re on a slope that’s slippery at the best of times and with the rainy season fast approaching access into our house will become an issue)
  9. Fence side boundary

Project 1

<whinge>We’ve had dealings with two landscapers and both were very difficult to work with and produced substandard work for a small fortune. First landscaping lesson learnt, don’t use landscapers. They tend to try their hands at everything and aren’t really master of anything in particular. Disclaimer: There’s a chance that we were really unfortunate with the landscapers we ended up with. Regardless, in future I’ll DIY or get specialists in to do bits and pieces.</whinge>

Decommissioning of chain wire fence in backyard.

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New timber paling fence going up.

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Trench for the pool wiring.

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Back retaining wall with increased height drainage pits and extra soil being put into the site.

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Project 2

Form work for concrete steps.

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Matching coloured concrete for steps with the pool tiles and driveway.

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Project 3

Side fence on top of retaining wall.

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Steps, and pool fence going up. DW pretending to be doing the work! JKS

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