Our Urban Oasis in JC: ORC Week 4

It’s week 4 of the ORC which officially marks the halfway point and I’m feeling pretty good, despite the fact that it might look like not much progress has been made.

So here’s what we have been up to in the backyard over the last week. We spent time leveling and smoothing out the top of the fencing to get it prepped for the lattice. In doing so, the neighbors back fence started to fall in on our space, so we went over and asked if they were okay with us removing it. As their fence was in bad shape to begin with, and they didn’t have a way to access that stretch, they were happy to have us remove a few of the sections.

Additionally, I found out that the local municipal code allows us to build a fence up to 8 feet high. Originally we were planning to add about 2 feet to the top of the fence in the lattice, but after reading the code, we can actually add almost a full 3 feet! (On the sides, we will keep the total height to 6’ and on the back we will increase to 8’ which will give everyone a little privacy without blocking us in too much.)

Aside from sanding the fence tops and removing the panels of the neighbors fence, we finally found some pavers to use! They are reclaimed slate pavers that the hubs located through Facebook Marketplace, fairly local-ish to us, and he will be picking them up this weekend. That means that this weekend, a big portion of our work will be focused on removing the old pavers and putting in the new ones and I’m pretty excited about that!!

About a week and a half ago (if not longer) I placed an order for the boards we will use for to build the lattice, and finally on Tuesday, I called and they are available to pickup! So I’ll also head out to get those this weekend and then I can start building the lattice inside in the basement in the evenings (energy permitting). My goal is to get the back section completed and installed first and then move around to the deck side in the second phase, and finish with the other side after all of the largest/trickiest pieces are done.

We ordered some comfy chairs (currently backorderd-so they may not make an official appearance on the ORC blog posts), and we also ordered the stain for the fence, decking, etc. so that is ready to go as soon as it arrives.

So it might not look like we’ve done a lot this week, but clearly there is a lot in motion, and I am really excited to see how this next week progresses. We have some pretty big components of the project showing up in the next few days which should really get us in gear and give us some good visual progress too. I think the two biggest sore spots for our space are the pavers and the fencing, and at the very least, I feel confident we will be able to get the pavers done in the next week, but we should also have everything we need to tackle both of these areas and then it will just be a matter of getting it done!

Thank you for checking in on our progress and following along as we transform our space! Next week this space will look so much different-I can’t wait! Be sure to hop over to the One Room Challenge main page to see the updates from countless other guest participants as well as the updates from the 20 host bloggers and designers-at the halfway point things are starting to really get interesting in so many projects!

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