I’m going to take you through all the changes that happened over the 2 week period with this project, from Demo, to pavers, to sod, to the handrails and the complete after. I hope you have a little while to watch the changes that happened at our place.
Here is where are gas supply comes into the house. The Town told us because it is technically a driveway, we had to have a steel pole filled with cement installed so that a car could not hit it. So we painted it gray and we tried to hide it with trellis planters, but our contractor had a better idea. See the spray paint on the ground, that is where the wall & pier would go. Make a half wall with a lamp pier to cover up the pole. NICE!!! Awesome contractor, plus of course he got more money out of us that way, but in the end we were the happy home owners.

We had a landscaper come in and take up all the old grass on the whole property after the paver contractor was done. He leveled out the whole property for us and then laid sod. We wern’t going to do sod to save money, but we started this project in mid May and we really wouldn’t have had grass until the following season, so we just went for the sod. In this two week period of time we actually decided on sod & a sprinkler system to be installed. Thank god our paver contractor was so good to us. He went out and bought the PVC pipes we would need to run the sprinkler system to go under the pavers. Plus he came up with the idea to run our gutter drain pipes under the pavers and up into the grass. It’s a cool system that just pops up when it rains and closes when it’s not raining. We love it. Well worth all the extra money we had to spend.
{backyard}
Side of house walkway. That small stoop is my Mom’s entrance to her apartment. You can see in this picture how the gutters go into the pavers and the PVC pipe goes under the walkway and up into the grass on the other side. You can see the little green cap in the grass area on the left of the picture.
We went with fans at the end of the driveway to break up the all gray area in the middle. We love how it turned out.
Speaking of the top of the stoop, this is what the landing of the stoop looks like.
Here are the handrails installed. We went with PVC rails. We love it. Never have to worry about them again for the life of the house probably. We just went with simple spindles, because that what worked best with our homes style.
We added potted planters to the stoop to add more color.
The sod is down. New sod really finishes off a yard. This is the view from across the street. It’s the only way to get the whole house and property into the shot. π
View from on top of the stairs in the backyard.
As you can see from this picture we still have some other projects to do, like paint the wood beams that support the Sunroom. We already painted the stairs. Now they blend in with the house and yard better. We really didn’t want to leave it a stained wood color. So we used Cabot stain which is really a solid paint color that we used. Cabot has stains that are the thickness of paint, actually thicker. This was really thick paint and went on really nicely. We don’t really regret painting it. Hopefully it lasts for a long time. It took two days to paint all the stairs and rails. We went with white on the rails & gray on the steps.
We also need to put some trim pieces at the bottom of the support poles for the stairs. See how it isn’t finished off. We bought PVC brick moulding for the trim. I can’t wait for hubby to cut it & install it. It will really finish the stairs off nicely. More on that once the project gets started. π
You can see from this picture how the stairs blend in since they are painted.
I need to add a rug, some pop of color with pillows & maybe a lantern or two to the gazebo area.
Here are some of the details in the backyard. Everything is so full and in bloom now…love it!!!
Here is our little water feature. They sell a Fountain in a container at Home Depot. We bought it last year. It comes in a 5 gallon container. The rocks, the pump & the container just go into a bigger planter and you have a water feature. I bought the planter at HomeGoods for $35 last year.
Our Daylilies.

What an amazing makeover. Love the pavers. I'm sure you're loving your yard these days. Looks fantastic – lots of work (for the contractor) – but so worth it.