Garden Part 2: Fencing and lots of rain

The last (and first) post I did about our garden renovation focused on digging everything out. And, to be honest, not a lot has happened since then.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. We have managed to fit our fences and get the hardcore down so it’s not too muddy to walk on. But the rain we had from the end of May to mid June has set us back A LOT. Particularly because we had to wait for all the water to dry out before we could carry on.

And now, we’ve got the complete OPPOSITE and it’s reaching 27 degrees here in the North West. We just can’t win.

Anyway, here are the latest pictures to show you exactly what we’ve done in the last month.

 

New Fencing

Once all our boundary walls were demolished and 110 tonnes of dirt, soil, and brick was removed, we were finally able to get our new fences in.

Jay did NOT plan for it to happen this way, but the final fence panel slotted in PERFECTLY. He didn’t measure it, he started at the opposite end of the driveway and put each fence panel in one at a time. This was the last one to go in and he probably couldn’t have got a better fit even if he measured it. We’ve since added a U bracket to properly attach it to the wall.

 

Then onto the fencing at the back of the house.

Our fencing at the back was a bit more difficult. It was a two person job, so we had numerous neighbours come to help Jay shift the 9ft posts.

This fencing will eventually be painted grey, so if you have any outdoor paint brands that you’d like to recommend, then I’d love to hear from you!

Where the concrete fence blocks start is where our patio will come to, so we’ve got a lot of hardcore and sand to go down to bring the garden up to a higher level. We’ve already had a small incident where the neighbour’s Pomeranian managed to get under the fence and was running down the street. Our back garden hasn’t been privatised yet so you can access the main road from our garden. The dog was caught and reunited with his owners! Phew.

Now the fencing is all up, the membrane is down (to stop weeds from eventually growing through the patio) and the hardcore is partly down. Things were progressing well. The fencing was all up in about 3 days. Until…

 

The Rain

The rain has been nearly endless up until a few days ago. Or we’d have one day of rain, one nice day, and then another day of rain.

We needed a few days consecutively where there wasn’t any rain so the garden could dry out and Jay could cement the drains in.

So, the whole renovation pretty much came to a standstill from the end of May to mid June.

The whole place was saturated for weeks.

Until finally this week, we’ve had nothing but glorious sunshine. In fact, we’re having a heatwave. Bloody typical.

This has meant that we’re progressing much faster. We’ve got our drainage in all around the house. Again, this shows how much hardcore we have to put down to bring the driveway up to the correct level.

But that’s our next challenge. Hopefully, in the next post, we’ll be able to show you some actual progress and paving going down!