For homeowners who want to convert their boring backyard into their dream home backyard, there are plenty of steps that you can take. The backyard is not only the place where you store outdoor items. For many people, it’s a gathering space that is central to your home’s entertaining life. It’s also the place where you probably take family photos or host summer gatherings. Overall, having a beautiful backyard enhances the curb appeal of your home if you ever decide to sell it and makes living in your home all the more enjoyable while you’re there.
Clear Out the Clutter
To bring new life to a stale backyard area, it may be time to start fresh and bring the land clearing contractors into the design of your dream home backyard. If your home has a lot of trees surrounding it, you may find that they get in the way of key parts of operating your home safely and effectively. For example, tree roots can interfere with septic systems and create costly problems for homeowners down the line. What’s more, if you have a lot of vegetation around your home but you would like an open yard to entertain and allow your kids to play freely, the plants can get in the way of your goals for your dream home backyard.
If your yard has started looking more like a jungle than a backyard, land clearing may sound like the ideal solution for you. Unfortunately, like with any home improvement or landscaping choice, land clearing doesn’t come without its cons and disadvantages. It can be hard on the environment and surrounding area. Although land clearing might seem like a good idea to achieve the aesthetic value that you desire for your yard, the impact on the environment can’t be ignored. If you’re worried about negatively impacting the environment with your landscaping choices, you may want to consider only partially clearing out an area of the yard where you want to entertain or consulting with specialists to see if you can achieve your goals without wiping the slate clean.
Create a Sheltered Outdoor Space
From gazebos to a pergola, homeowners have plenty of options for what they can use to protect guests from the elements when they entertain. If the interior of your home doesn’t offer enough space for your entertaining needs, you can expand the amount of square footage available to your guests by getting a pergola. For those who don’t know, a pergola is an outdoor seating area with an open, latticed roof that keeps the structure open enough to let the sunshine in while keeping falling leaves and other unwanted aspects of the elements off of you and your guests.
There are many advantages to choosing a pergola over an open seating area without any sort of protection or roofing. As shelteroutdoor.com shares, “Pergolas offer a cozy outdoor seating area where friends and family can gather around a fire pit, dine al fresco, or even congregate in an outdoor bar. Since pergolas are not part of the home’s main architecture, they also help homeowners to maintain a level of privacy while keeping the home clean during get-togethers.”
Maintain the Hot Tub
While owning a hot tub can be fun, it can also be a chore sometimes even when you have your dream home backyard with it. As any homeowner with a hot tub will know, hot tub maintenance should be a priority if you intend to keep your hot tub safe, comfortable, and clean for guests to use. To minimize safety risks such as the spread of diseases and bacteria, you’ll want to add chlorine to your hot tub regularly. Otherwise, your hot tub may appear safe to use with the naked eye but underneath its safe appearance, you’ll find that it’s unhealthy to use it. To keep your hot tub safe to use, you’ll want to add chlorine to the hot tub about once a week. If your hot tub manufacturer recommends adding chlorine to water more or less frequently, you should follow their guidelines.
Take Care of the Inside, Too
As you’re focusing on your goals to create the backyard setup of your dreams, plans for interior home renovations may fall by the wayside. This is only natural since you can only pour so much money and time into so many projects at one time. If you’re limited on funds, resources, or time, it may make the most sense to pour all of your energy into reimagining and reinventing your backyard. After all of your backyard projects are finished, you can pick up where you left off and start working on the inside of your home again or replace the roof by hiring the best roofer. If you want to be able to entertain your home’s interior regularly, you should start making a list of potential home improvement tasks to improve the interior spaces in your home.
For a starting place for homeowners to create an optimal interior design for entertaining, mitchcogroup.com shares that “If you do a lot of entertaining, consider adding dedicated areas and features for various tasks and activities, such as a wet bar, coffee and hot beverage station, ice machine, under-cabinet beverage refrigerator, even a wine room.” Just because you’re working on making your dream home backyard doesn’t mean that you can’t dream about your home’s inside design, too!
Add a Fire Pit
For many homeowners, a fire pit is a huge part of their dream home backyard design. Before you install a fire pit, you should give it a strong foundation with the proper type of base. As lowes.com indicates, “If you’re building the fire pit in your yard, you’ll need a paver base to create a stable foundation for the blocks. While it may not be required for a stone or concrete patio, installing a base will protect the surface of your patio.” The materials that you use for the base may vary based on what’s available and what you like from an aesthetic perspective. Some popular materials that builders use to create a base for a fire pit include gravel paver bases, sand, dirt, fire glass, and lava stones. For a simple, basic look, you can also use concrete slabs to get the job done. Although the base of the fire pit may seem like something that’s not necessary to consider too heavily, it matters quite a bit if you want to keep your fire from spreading to other areas of the yard or home. Additionally, you’ll need a good base for the fire pit to make sure that cold and wet weather doesn’t dampen your fire–literally.
Once you have a fire pit installed, you can contact a kiln firewood supply company to supply the firewood. This is also a good idea if you intend to have a fire stove for cooking or heating in an enclosed area inside or outside of the home. If you don’t have the funds to pay for firewood, you may be able to find ways to procure firewood yourself by scavenging the woods around your home. Just read up on local laws about taking wood from public or private places before you try to get firewood for free. Also, don’t chop trees unless you have the proper tools, training, and experience to do so safely. The hospital bill for a broken back or other medical emergency that results from injuring yourself by attempting to chop down trees with minimal skills or inappropriate tools will be significantly higher than a firewood bill, so it’s worth investing in firewood from a qualified company if you can’t get it on your own as you’re completing your vision for your dream backyard with a smoldering fire pit.
Landscape Away
If you’re building a home from scratch, the process of making your dream home backyard a reality will start with contacting excavation companies. These companies are good at removing dirt, debris, rocks, and structures from a property or piece of land before you can do anything else. Without going through the excavation process, you won’t be able to lay down a foundation for a home or plant grass in your yard. Before you settle on choosing one excavation company, it’s a good idea to get quotes from multiple excavation companies. This will ensure that you not only get the best rate for the job but it will also guarantee that you’ll find the excavating team that’s most qualified to tackle the task at hand. If you have special circumstances that the excavation company should consider, it’s best to bring those up early in your conversations with the company. That way, they can prepare to tackle them head-on and won’t be surprised when they run into those issues along the way.
Think About Privacy and Protection
These days, you can never be too careful about protecting yourself, your loved ones, and your guests from outside dangers. One of the ways that you can keep your family and friends safe while they’re at your home without causing yourself a headache from the hassle of opening and closing a manual gate is by installing an automatic gate to protect your dream home backyard. Although you may not have all the tools you need to install it, the good news is that there are qualified professionals out there who can deliver the automatic gate and install it for you. Once the automatic gate is installed, you can feel safe and secure in your backyard.
While automatic gates are great, they do have some drawbacks that make some homeowners hesitant to install one. First and foremost, these types of gates are far more costly than their manual counterparts. Because of the advanced technology and mechanics used to operate these gates, they can be more expensive to purchase and install than a regular fence or manual gate. Additionally, if they get stuck or have a problem, it can be more complicated to find the right solution to repair them. Their parts may also be more pricey to replace if they wear out over time. Still, if money is no object when it comes to safety, you shouldn’t let the potential cost outweigh the benefits of this type of gate. Even if you don’t go with an automatic one, having a gate is a good idea for protecting your dream home backyard and keeping your loved ones safe while they’re at your home.
Don’t Forget the Sewer System
If you know or suspect that your sewer line has broken, it’s time to schedule a sewer line repair or even a sewer line replacement. There’s no way around it–when you’re coming up with a list of items to include in renovating your yard to create your dream home backyard, maintaining necessary aspects of the yard such as the sewer system has to take priority. If you neglect the important maintenance tasks in favor of focusing on fun or aesthetic ones, you’ll lose your dream home backyard to disrepair and emergency issues.
As you’re debating whether your sewer line needs to be repaired or replaced, there are some ways you can tell which one would be best for your needs. As accurateleak.com shares, “Sewer line repair is recommended when there are cracks or holes in your sewer line. If damage is severe, replacement of the line is recommended. A pipe leak test must be performed, then there are two ways to proceed. The first is with trenchless repair. The second is with a traditional approach. There is a cost differential. Trenchless repair will generally be about half the cost of traditional work. This is why it’s important to have an expert plumbing service on hand to determine which solution is best.” Of course, if your sewer line needs to be replaced, you shouldn’t skimp out on the replacement and choose the cheaper option. This cheap choice will come back to haunt you if the sewer line breaks and spills into other areas of your yard.
With these tips, your dream backyard is within reach. Soon, you’ll see your vision become a reality. While it’s stressful to change your backyard, it’ll be worthwhile when you see the finished product. What’s more, it’s rewarding to go after your home improvement goals.