My Tiny Backyard: Platform Deck & Some Cleaning Up

Hey all, I’m back for week 2 of the One Room Challenge and sharing the progress we’ve made on our tiny backyard.  Here’s week 1 if you missed it. Let’s jump right in.

One of the main projects we wanted to do in the backyard was clean up the area around the house with a platform deck. We settled on the platform deck for a few reasons:

• A concrete patio was way too expensive
• Landscaping the area around the house with gravel and pavers would be nice, but it wouldn’t create as clean and long-lasting of a solution as we were hoping for
• We could match it with the deck that’s above it for a cohesive look
• We could get the look of a clean, modern, and practical space without the cost of a concrete patio
• My dad said he’d do it 🙂

As I’ve mentioned before, my dad is a licensed contractor, so he put in the deck. He whipped it out in a couple of days, working on it here and there between his real jobs for real customers who pay him real money. (Did I mention how much I love my dad? He’s the best.)

Here’s a reminder of how the spot looked before the deck:

Having a professional do the deck was important to us because it is way too big of a project for us to DIY, and since it’s structural, we wanted it to be 100% legit. So to keep costs down, we chose to do it all with wood.

Just kidding. I was a bit of a brat about this one and wanted it to be finished with the same gray Trex we have on the second-story deck. Mike agreed. But hear me out, here…this stuff is beautiful, and while it’s more of an investment up front, it needs ZERO maintenance. No refinishing, staining, etc. And I absolutely love the clean, modern look of the gray Trex. I just swallowed the price tag on it, which was about 80% of the total materials cost.

(Note: Sharing the tutorial for the benches pictured here, but once I saw them with the gray Trex, I refinished them in a different color. More on that when I post the bench plans.)

Since our yard is on a bit of a slope, the deck has a small area where it is above the ground. Not enough to warrant steps, but enough to allow to cats to crawl under it. In fact, THE VERY FIRST TIME we had them out with the deck built but not finished, they crawled under. Looking forward to having dad wrap this project up—there are just a few things left he needs to do. Pics forthcoming.

The deck alone made a HUGE difference in cleaning up the yard, but to finish off this part of the yard, I wanted to do some landscaping around the air conditioning unit/general utilities area. We also didn’t want to leave any grass back in that weird corner to mow. This was a huge PITA because I had to pull up some of the sod and dig out the dirt. Way more work than I was expecting, but we think it turned out great.

Here’s a quick little tutorial on how we cleaned this area up.

Supplies

• Landscaping fabric. We got this kind.
• Landscaping pins
• All-purpose drainage rocks. We got bags of this kind.
• Decorative stones
• Gardening gloves
• Trowel

Step 1: First we cleaned up the area. As a reminder, here’s what it looked like before. We used a shovel to cut and dig out some parts. We also dug up a bit of extra dirt so the rocks wouldn’t sit too high.

Step 2: Next we evened out the area. I actually did this while the dirt was wet after it had rained. While it was really messy, it was easy to mold the dirt and pack it down like clay.

Step 3: After we had an even space, we laid landscaping fabric cut to size and pinned it in place using landscaping pins.

Here’s some of the fabric laid.

Step 4: I laid a “L” shape of pavers (you’ll see why in an upcoming post) and then filled in the rest with rocks. Luckily we didn’t really need to edge off most of the area since the fence, house, and deck did most of that for us.

Since these drainage rocks came really dirty in the bag, I just gave them a good hosing off after dumping them in the spot. It cleaned them up nicely.

Also, the end of the rocky area where the rocks just kind of stop—we’re going to have garden beds butting up against that area, so it will look cleaner when those are in. One step at a time.

And then I finished the L-shaped screen for our utilities area. (This makes it sound like it was a quick and easy project. It was not, lol. See the full post for that project here!)

Once the beds are in to cap off the other side of the rocky area, we’ll be dumping a layer of prettier decorative stones over the parts you can see. No need to waste money on prettier stones that will be hidden behind this beauty:

This space already looks so different. Here’s a before and after because I like to see them as I go along (keeps me motivated)…

And here’s a recap of the to-do list. I’m bolding what’s on my radar next…

• Build a platform deck (not DIY—having a licensed contractor do it to make sure it’s done right)
• Add additional lighting—hanging? string? No idea.
• Clean up area around the AC unit and the gas meter/gutter using rocks
• Build table and benches for deck (Done, actually. Just need to finish them off with some no-slip bottoms because the Trex is very slick.)
• Build screen for AC unit and all of those wires and boxes back there
• Hang plants
• Build veggie beds and lattice for climbing veggies
• Hang bucket swing for Ramona
• General landscaping around the fence perimeter (flowers, bushes, etc)
• Maybe: Privacy screening for the deck area (depending on the cost, and I don’t think I want to DIY this)
• Major maybe: Let myself do a little shopping for some fun items like a large outdoor vase planter—budget depending

I removed “add a rain barrel” because we decided against it based on space. I’d really like one, I just can’t find something that works well for the space.