Our Jersey City Urban Oasis: ORC Weeks 5-7
Yikes!! How is it week 7 already? That means that we only have one more week of the One Room Challenge. If you aren’t familiar with the one room challenge, it’s an 8 week challenge (typically 6 but extended for COVID) where host and guest bloggers participate to transform one space of their home from start to finish in those 8 weeks. There are weekly updates, and I encourage you to scroll back through our posts to learn more about our space, as well as clicking over to the main page to learn more and see what others are doing for their challenge!
We have been working on our backyard. It’s a small 11’ x 26’ space that we are trying to get a little more life and personality into so that we can really utilize and enjoy the space both functionally and aesthetically. We started out with a pretty hefty list of projects/focus areas for the space, and have tackled several of them, I have cut one out, and there is still a long ways to go on much of the project… I’m starting to feel a bit rushed and nervous.
I actually just received tracking info on one of our orders and it won’t arrive until the 27th so you might not see my Week 8 post until the Sunday of week 8 instead of the typically targeted Thursday post date. We’ll see how it all shakes out, and technically for the final post this time, we can post our project final anytime between June 25th and July 5th, so maybe we’ll hold off anyway and try to maximize what we can accomplish.
Over the last two weeks, we’ve taken a pause on all social media and the blog to focus on more important world issues. You can read more about that here.
So here’s a recap of what we worked on in the yard in the meantime:
We removed all of the old pavers, hauled in the new ones and started laying them out. The removal and bringing in took up about a weeks worth of work in and of itself.
A quick note on the sustainability of our paver situation. Our existing pavers were in good shape, they had a lot of life left in them and just weren’t our taste, nor did we want to take up the full yard with pavers. We had been removing them since we did our first backyard project last summer. Each time we removed them, we listed them for sale on Facebook Marketplace to get them in the hands of someone who did like them and could get the most use out of them. If you know me, you know sustainability is a key component to our design practice and our family life as well, so anytime we can keep something out of a dumpster and subsequent landfill is a win.
Additionally, we scoured Marketplace, salvage yards, and a few other resources to look for used pavers before reaching out to a friend in the industry to try and find paver options. Ultimately we totally lucked out and found exactly the right pavers through Marketplace to use in our backyard. The man selling them was doing the same thing we were doing-replacing them with something more in line with their taste and they were also increasing the size of their patio (ah suburbia), and didn’t have enough existing for that. So it was a big sustainable cycle.
We sold our pavers to someone who would use them, and then we purchased pavers from someone else who was getting rid of theirs and around again. The beauty of it all! And the best part, by selling our pavers we were able to cover about 75% of the cost of the new pavers-talk about a win!
Alright so back to our timeline and progress…the following week, we sanded the picnic bench (only one-lol) and laid the new pavers getting them as straight and level as possible. From there, I started to figure out how to make the first stretch of lattice work.
The way I planned the lattice, I have to build it myself, and so far, nothing is in place, but there has been quite a bit of prep work that has gone into it. The lattice will be a modern horizontal slat pattern, not a lattice by true definition, but will serve the purpose and give me the look I’m going for.
It has been a few weeks of a lot of measuring, cutting, installing support pieces and starting the process of staining. We opted to stain the support structure first, as well as staining the individual lattice pieces prior to install.
One of the more exciting things that happened just this week: we finally had a garden spout installed in the backyard and can attach a hose OUTSIDE to water plants, connect the sprinkler, etc! Previously, the only spigot was in the basement towards the front of the house and we had two hoses one inside, one outside, and when we wanted water outside, we’d go downstairs, open a window, connect the hoses through said window, and then turn on the hose from there and run back up to make sure we had the necessary pressure and flow. Having the hose connected and operational right in the backyard is a game-changer!! It’s the little things.
We still have a long way to go; a lot more cuts will be in my future; a lot of staining left to be done… but I do feel we are making good progress and that some of the larger more complicated areas of the space have been tackled.
Here’s a look at the list and where we are at with everything:
(DONE) Clean up/remove tops of existing fence.
Paint or stain existing fence.
Add a clean and simple lattice at the top.
Where the fence is missing between the decking and the next panel- add in a full height of lattice.
Add some vining plants there to add a nice focal point and give E some of those flowers she is looking for.
(DONE) Remove the existing pavers.
(DONE) Bring in larger, natural stone pavers, ideally spaced a few inches away from each other with grass planted in between to add softness and expand the visual appearance of the yard.
(Removed- we won’t have time to complete this the way I want so we are putting it off until after the ORC has concluded.) Build a planter-bench for the back perimeter space.
Clean up and paint the picnic table- I’m thinking yellow!
Clean, sand and prep the deck for refinishing.
Seal/stain the deck.
Add plants in the planter box portions of the bench.
(ORDERED) Add in finishing details- additional seating, pillows, plants, etc.
So that is where we are at, and you can see we still have quite a ways to go. Here’s hoping the weather continues to cooperate and that I can continue to have enough energy to get in a few hours of work on the yard after E goes to bed so we can make all the progress over the next week! I’ll share some on Instagram in stories as I work on it… in the meantime, you can hop over to the ORC pain page to check out all the incredible Host and Guest projects and their progress over the last few weeks. Have you been following along with any projects in particular? Next week is like design Christmas when all the reveals are posted, so now is the perfect time to catch up prior to the big day!