We’ve all heard the saying ‘Home takes time’, well not only that but the ‘Yard takes time’ as well. When we purchased our home 6 years ago we spent most of our efforts and finances on creating a space inside that we love – well we are still working on completing that, but this year we wanted to focus some of our time and efforts into a space we could enjoy as a family. Our backyard oasis!
Our family loves being outdoors, we love the idea of an outdoor fire area and all that comes along with the coziness, such as roasting marshmallows, telling stories and just watching the nature of the fire. The problem is we have a very open yard and we wanted to create a space that was truly ours.
In comes the idea of building our dream outdoor space for us to enjoy making memories around a cozy firepit.
We decided that the first stages of our project would mean building up a leveled area in our yard to create a patio. This took us about a month of leveling, sourcing gravel, sand filler and bricks we received off marketplace.
The next stage would be to build a privacy fence. Home Hardware had some great options for fencing and we decided with the aesthetics of our yard and home a cedar wood fence would be the perfect addition. How do you build a fence? Well my husband and I had little experience with this, but we are lucky in that my In-laws have retired to a farm and have built a few fences around their property and were willing to help.
We started by digging down and adding fence posts cemented in every 8ft around the perimeter of our property, it’s important to be very accurate of the spacing as once these are set into the concrete the fence panels themselves will be braced between each post. This took a few days of cementing and drying time before the panels could go in – this is where I got to help when it came to attaching the panels between.
After that we had to wait, and wait and wait. Once the fence was assembled we couldn’t jump right into staining – which I am always eager to move onto the finishing stages. It is very important for the wood to dry and be sure that it has adapted to the environment. If you stain too early it won’t properly absorb into the wood and the fence will appear blotchy. We had an unusually wet summer on the West Coast and even though our fence was built in June we weren’t able to stain it until September due to the weather. We were still able to enjoy our new privacy area all summer. Morning coffees, playing cards and warm nights and until we could finish the space.
In September after the weather brightened up we took a weekend and dedicated it to staining. I chose the colour Timber Wood in BeautiTone’s Wood-Shield Best stain as it was the perfect deep wood shade without much of a red undertone that will go beautifully as we start to update our exterior (hopefully coming next summer). This past week we were able to enjoy our first fall fires of many for our space and it has been wonderful to enjoy all the hard work we put into our space. Home Hardware has been our destination for all things to make our house a home.
To complete our outdoor oasis we added the black Adirondack chairs to stay cozy in. I love the drink holder feature as a place to put our hot chocolates. Our fire ring was also updated with this beautiful light weight one from HomeHardware and we really feel the heat radiate from it. As a request from my husband he wanted somewhere we could stack our wood for easy access fireside and I love the wood holder we chose for the space.
Is there anything better than a fall fire? Our backyard area is finally complete thanks to Home Hardware. Now to break out the marshmallows, hot chocolate and cozy up to an outdoor fire.
