Sweat, Stones, and Stucco: How We Revamped Our Backyard Together

My wife and I tackled a big backyard renovation mostly on our own, except for some help with ripping out the grass and delivering rocks. It was a long and tough process, but it was a lot of fun since our kids got involved and we saved a lot of money. However, we definitely didn’t save much time!

We had several types of grass growing in our backyard, with some areas thriving and others struggling. One particular challenge was the Bermuda grass. While it's known for being tough and resilient, we could never get it to establish evenly. Despite having a barrier that went over a foot deep, the Bermuda grass still managed to creep underneath and pop up where we didn't want it. My wife didn't like it and I don't blame her so we decided to tear out the grass. Which by the way if it's bermuda grass, be ready for a long and tough fight to get rid of it!

The toughest part was removing the grass. We had rented a sod cutter, but it wouldn’t fit in either of our vehicles. Fortunately, a friend and coworker of my wife came to the rescue, helping us transport the sod cutter in his truck and sticking around to assist with the grass removal. We spent a lot of time cutting out the sod, then using a wheelbarrow to haul it to the U-Haul we were using. Let me tell you, grass mixed with some pretty wet clay dirt is incredibly heavy.

At this point, I was questioning whether all this effort was really worth it and if it might have been better to hire someone. The soil was so hard (mostly clay) that cutting and transporting the sod was challenging, and the work was, for me, pretty back-breaking.

The following pictures were taken after a few days, and the area looked pretty clean. However, the battle with the grass was far from over. Bermuda grass kept coming back, and for the next six months, we struggled with it. Eventually, we let a decent amount grow back before hitting it with multiple rounds of Roundup. I’m not a fan of using chemicals, but I wasn’t ready to dig through the entire backyard to remove every last root. Besides, if we missed even one root, the grass would just grow back.

After about six months, we continued our work by removing the existing black border. It turned out to be much tougher than I expected because the soil was so compact and the border had been installed a foot deep about seven years ago. But we managed to get it done! We then had a bunch of supplies dropped off, including paver sand, paver base, and concrete blocks.

Once the supplies were delivered, I dove into digging the trench all the way around our backyard and leveling everything. I made quite a few mistakes along the way. For one, I didn’t dig the trench wide enough to properly tamp the paver sand and base flat. This meant I had to go around the backyard, widening the trench as I went. In some spots, even after widening it, the trench was still too narrow, so I decided to just make do. Honestly, I procrastinated a lot during this phase, and it took me about three months to finish, with most of the work getting done in the final two weeks.

Once we finished the wall, which honestly didn’t look great, we decided to stucco it to give it a more uniform appearance. In the end, my wife took on the stucco application while I mixed it, because my attempts were too “messy.” She was probably right.

We managed to stucco the entire wall in about two weeks. We couldn’t spend too much time on it at once because the kids would get bored, and with so much dirt around, it was a challenge to keep them and the mess away from the drying stucco. Once we were done, we sprayed on a light grayish color to match our house. At this point, the wall looked a thousand times better than it did before the stucco and paint work

And yes, as you can see, we did have a patio cover put up and no I did not do this. Not a chance

The next step was installing the pavers. For the first section, I tried to get everything as straight as possible and did a decent job. I didn’t use a string line, and honestly, that would have helped a lot. But after nearly a year of working on the backyard, I was ready to be done and just wanted to finish it up.

After installing all the pavers and borders for the areas where we planned to plant fruit trees, we were so close to being finished, just so, so close. We also installed flower pots in the ground to add some color with flowers and give the backyard a bit more life. Then we got our next delivery and guess what it wasn't enough. We ordered river rock and initially ordered around 4 tons.

Moving the rock wasn’t too bad at first, but it got challenging when the container started getting really low. Eventually, we bought wire cutters, which allowed me to cut the rocks down lower, making it easier to shovel them into the wheelbarrow and move them into the backyard.

I got pretty close to finishing the backyard, but then I ran out of rocks and had to order 2 more tons. I didn’t take a picture of this because I was done with moving rocks—especially since I was handling this step solo. but my boys did a good job of keeping me company and I got a super cute picture of them.

Eventually, I completed the backyard, and it looks pretty good now. It might not suit everyone's taste, but we enjoy it and have made a lot of use out of it. This post actually made me realize that I don't have many good pictures of the backyard now that it’s finished. Everything not covered in rock is covered in wood mulch, except around the trees where we pulled the mulch back to keep it away from the base. In the left corner, we have all our dragonfruit plants, which have been doing pretty well this year. We’ve already enjoyed multiple fruits and have a lot more growing.

For the rest of the fruit trees, we either didn’t let them flower or we plucked the ones that did, as we wanted them to focus on growing their roots and establishing themselves. We also installed a patio cover so our kids could play outside even on hot days, providing them with some shade when it got too sunny.

I’m not sure I’d tackle a project like this again, but I learned a lot and I’m proud of what I accomplished with the help of my wife and kids.