Back Yard Renovation

Over the last year (mainly due to time off from COVID lockdown) I have done a major re-fit on the downstairs of my house. I decorated the front room, opening up the chimney, I completely ripped out, re-designed and re-installed a new kitchen, I've fitted a new oak staircase and tiled floor in the hall and put in an under stairs toilet.

One thing I hadn't touched at all since we moved in over 6 years ago however, is our yard. Its only small, 3.5m x 2.8m and we rarely use it at all. In fact whilst renovating the rest of the house the yard was the dumping ground for all my waste rubble, timber and building materials.

We'd put out a few plants to make it look better and there was a BBQ out there I've used once, but in reality its just seen and not used.

After finishing the kitchen and taking all that rubbish to the dump however, I thought it time to tidy it up a bit and make it a usable, nice place to be.

Another influencing factor was getting a dog recently and having the yard nice so she could go out in it easily, which in its current form was a bit of a difficulty for her.

This was a fairly big job, more than I'd anticipated and I went further with the renovations than I'd originally planned, using a lot more stuff, most of which is listed below.

Materials

1. Cement
2. Sharp Sand
3. Pea Gravel 10mm & 20mm
4. Self Levelling Compound
5. Primer
6. Porcelain Floor Tiles 300mm x 600mm
7. Tile Adhesive
8. Grout
9. Larch Timber Boards 150mm x 18mm x 3600mm
10. LED lighting
11. Solar lighting
12. OSMO 420 Protection Oil
13. Yacht Varnish
14. Stainless Nails
15. Outdoor Socket
16. Shower Valve
17. Various hardware screws, nails etc

Equipment

1. Paddle Mixer
2. Spade
3. Concrete Float
4. Grout Float
5. Tile Cutter
6. 125mm Angle Grinder
7. Diamond Cutting Blades
8. Sledge Hammer
9. Tile Levellers
10. Hand Tools - Hammer/Screwdriver/Saw/Marking Equipment etc
11. Chop Saw
12. Sweeping Brushes
13. Pressure Washer
14. Electric Drill/Battery Drill
15. Impact Driver

In its current state the yard was basically a small, rectangular space with a small arrangement of paving stones in the shape of a diamond in the centre.

This made the floor uneven and mostly unusable, there were a few old sinks used as planters around the edges on home made benches and a BBQ shoved in the corner.

It looked very tired and had odd bits of junk in left behind from other renovations from different parts of the house.

The plan was to take everything out and level the yard across, so it was flat, not raised in the centre and low around the outside, which just caused water and dirt to get trapped and made it difficult to use.

I could then paint it up all nice, do something with the walls to tidy those up and put some new plants and lighting in, making it a usable space.

One thing I did before starting the renovation was to put in a power supply and a water supply in to the yard.

I felt this would be a useful thing to do as I was going to need to mix concrete and my options were, mix it in the garage or out the back of the house and carry it through the kitchen, my newly fitted kitchen. Or carry everything out to the yard and run cables and hoses through the house, having to leave doors open, getting dust and water in the house etc etc.

As such I decided to install water and power outside making it far easier to mix the concrete. Also it would let me put some powered LED lights out in the yard I'd now decided on and I could use the water to wash the dog when shes been out in the sea and is covered in sand, rather than the bath upstairs I was currently using, which causes a right mess when initially getting her through the house.

For the power I bought a single, waterproof outside socket to mount on the wall. The left side of the yard outside is the dining room wall of the house and in the far corner of that room is a double power socket. The easiest way for me to power to the socket in the yard was to drill through the wall and run a cable through with a plug on. That could then plug directly into that socket in the dining room, then simply wire the other end into my outdoor socket.

This also allowed me to put a smart socket adaptor on so I can tell Alexa or use my phone to turn my yard lights on and off in the future.

I drilled a hole from the inside of the dining room out through into the yard, then using some spare power cable fed this through the wall. I stripped one end of the cable and wired this into the corresponding terminals on the back of the socket.

Pushing the socket back flush against the wall I could then mark its position to drill some holes to mount it. With the holes marked and drilled out using a masonry bit, I inserted a couple of wall plugs and some stainless steel screws secure the socket to the wall. I also put some silicone round the socket just to make it extra weatherproof and stop any water getting in the hole to the house where the cable was fed through.

Back in the dining room I then cut off the excess cable and fitted a 3 pin plug to the end, plugged it in my double socket and went to check the outside socket had power, which it did.

For the water aspect I installed an old shower valve that I had replaced when I re-did my bathroom a few years ago. I wanted a shower valve ideally as this would allow the dog to have easily controlled warm water when being washed.

The right hand side of the yard is the far garage wall and luckily at the opposite end of the garage at the back of the house I have a hot and cold water supply. The previous owners had a kind of utility room set up there and I have recently installed a sink unit to wash paint brushes in etc that I had left over from my kitchen renovation.

First thing was to mark on the wall outside where the shower valve was to go. I could then drill through the wall for the 15mm copper pipes using my SDS drill and a 16mm masonry bit.

Dry fitting the shower to the outside of the wall I now had two pipe ends coming through inside the garage, one hot one cold. Using 15mm push fit fittings and lengths of 15mm poly pipe, I could then run the pipes back to the water supply at the rear of the garage, hiding the pipes under my workbench which runs the full 6 meter length.

The water supply itself is under the sink in a cupboard on the opposite side of a wall to the garage, so I had to again drill through with my SDS, so I could connect the pipes under the sink.

To allow connection I had to replace the current under sink configuration, which was just directly connected. Turning the water off I instead used two tee pieces to split each supply. With each one split it was just a matter of connecting the corresponding pipes to the correct feed using a combination of push fit and brass threaded fittings. I also installed two brass non return valves to the hot and cold to stop any contamination to my water, as it was effectively an outside tap.

With everything connected up and checked I turned the water back on and inspected the pipe runs for leaks, which amazingly I didn't have (first time for everything)

With water and power installed it would now make the rest of the build that little bit easier.

To begin I started by getting rid of some of the junk that was out in the yard. The old BBQ went the journey as did some old bits of wood and old planters that were out there.

Next with some space cleared I pressure washed the yard with a high pressure cleaner, making use of my new outdoor water and power supplies. Previous cleaning attempts had always resulted in water and dirt getting through the patio door where hose and power cables came through, but now with everything outside it was a sealed space making the cleaning that much easier.

The paving slabs and surrounding concrete had months of dirt on and there was residue from all the building waste I had dumped there for 6 months whilst doing the kitchen. I also blasted off the walls and gave everything a good brush down to try clean it up as much as I could.

I didn't really have anywhere to put the remaining planters (very heavy old stone sinks) and things that were out in the yard, so I had to put it all to one side and just keep moving it around as I went.

With the yard clean I could then start to dismantle what was currently there.

With the yard washed and most of the rubbish removed I was left with a long planter bench at the back of the yard made up of two brick pillars with timber lengths resting across the top. There was also an old porcelain boot washing sink with plants in to the right also sat on two brick pillars against the garage wall.

I unscrewed the timber bench from the pillars at the back and gently prised off the sink, cutting the silicone that was holding it to the wall and tapping it free of its cement base on the bricks. I wanted to keep the sink, so needed to be gentle so it didn't crack.

With the timber off and sink removed I could then demolish the brick pillars using my 9kg sledge hammer to make short work of knocking the bricks free.

I kept the bricks and smashed them up using my smaller mash hammer to use as hardcore around the patio for where I was to pour my concrete. This would mean I needed less concrete and wouldn't need to pay to take the bricks to the local tip to get rid of them, saving me a few quid in the process.

Once all 4 pillars were removed and broken up, I spread the brick remnants around the outside of my patio evenly ready to pour the concrete on top.

Sadly there aren't many photos of this stage as it was 25-30 degrees when I was mixing, so I was concentrating more on working before things set than photography unfortunately.

To make the concrete to level the yard I used a 3:2:1 mix. 3 parts aggregate to 2 parts sand to 1 part cement.

I used 10mm pea gravel for the aggregate, along with sharp sand and standard building cement. Unfortunately due to shortages of building supplies in the UK due to the pandemic, these materials weren't easy to come by and I had to substitute some of the 10mm gravel for 20mm, as that's all that was available at the time. I ended up having to go to 3 B&Q's just to get what I needed as no one had stock all in one place.

To mix the concrete I ideally wanted to use a cement mixer. My friend has one that I borrowed for the kitchen, but there were a couple of issues:

• He lives 100 miles away
• Getting the mixer into the yard
• having enough space in the yard to use said mixer

In the end I decided to use buckets and my paddle mixer. Previously I had only used this to mix thinner floor screed when I levelled my kitchen, so I was unsure if it would be up to the task, never the less I carried on.

I had bought (eventually) 12 bags of gravel, 8 sand and 4 cement and mixed my concrete in batches of 1 bag of gravel to two thirds a bag of sand to one third a bag of cement, 3:2:1.

I started by adding the sand and cement to a large rubber bucket and combining them together dry using the paddle mixer, so they were fully incorporated in to one another. I then used the hose on my outdoor shower ;) to add in water, mixing up a fairly wet, thin mix. I then dumped in a full bag of gravel and nervously started mixing with the paddle mixer, unsure if the weight of the added gravel and new thickness of the mix would overload the motor. Thankfully all seemed well and the mixer did a very good job of combining all the material.

After a minute or so mixing I could then pour out the concrete over my broken up bricks, around the edge of the paving slabs, using my concrete float to spread it around and a piece of timber sat on top of the paving slabs to 'saw' across the top of the concrete to get it level with the little patio in the middle of the yard.

I continued mixing, pouring and levelling until all my concrete material was used up. (sadly I was a tiny bit short at the end, so had to quickly trek back to B&Q to try find another bag of each to make up the difference) Once the whole yard was poured though I used my float to smooth out the surface as best I could and left it to set up for a week before continuing.

With the concrete left for just over a week, it had set, but was a little uneven in places and I had the patio in the middle of it with grooves running through and a roughness to the surface due to the texture on the slabs.

To make the whole yard flat I decided to pour some self levelling screed. I had used a load of it a few months back to level my kitchen floor after installing underfloor heating, so I had experience with it and knew it was the best way to achieve what I wanted.

Before I could pour the screed however I first needed to prime what was there to aid in the adhesion of the screed to my newly poured concrete. This was just a case of using a liquid primer painted directly over the concrete and slabs. I had some primer left over from the kitchen floor pour so I used that for the yard.

I just mixed the primer 50/50 with water and rolled it out with an old emulsion roller across the entire floor. The primer was blue so it makes it easy to see where you have and haven't coated. Once the whole yard was covered I left it to dry a few hours. It goes clear once dry so I knew when it was ready to pour on.

The next issue to solve was in the corner of my yard, as there is a drain and so any screed I poured would instantly run off down there and be lost. When pouring the concrete I just blocked it off with bricks, but as the screed is almost water like this wouldn't work as it'd just run through and around the bricks.

Luckily I again had some kitchen floor leftovers to solve the problem. Its basically a foam strip with adhesive on the bottom edge that you fix round the perimeter of a room to keep the screed contained. In my case I just cut it and secured it around the inside edge of my drain. I also used some silicone around the bottom edge just to fill some small gaps and further secure the foam.

If I'd not had the foam I could have just used wooden batons and silicone to do the same job, but it was there so I made use of it. I also braced one side of the foam with a piece of wood wedged in the drain, just in case the weight of the poured screed was enough to bend it over. In normal use the foam has a wall behind it but here it was just air.

Once the silicone was dry I was ready to pour some screed. I'd bought 5 bags that allowed me to pour between 10-50mm of depth depending on square meterage. The bags reckoned they'd do 4mm of depth over a 4m area. My yard is about 9.5m, so I was expecting around 8mm depth of pour, which was fine and plenty to cover the anomalies that existed in the current surface of the yard.

To mix the screed I was again using my paddle mixer (sure that it could as its why I originally bought it) and used a tall bucket to mix it in.

The screed is mixed per bag (you could mix part bags but there's no sure fire way to gauge quantities and ratios etc) and an amount of water to use per bag is specified on the label. For mine it was one 20kg bag to around 4.8 litres of water. In my experience however, pouring a 32m kitchen floor previously, I always add a bit more water as the mix flows better and levels better. Doing the kitchen and following the mix quantities to the letter I had a thicker mixture and some high spots where it didn't flow as well, resulting in me having to buy more screed to level it out again.

The screed also sets pretty quick, so once you start you need to have a system to mix and pour quickly, otherwise your pours won't run and flow together and you may end up with sections setting before others are poured, making it impossible to get the floor level.

To aid with the process I measure out the water before starting using a measuring jug, then pour that water into a bucket and marking the bucket inside where the top of the water line is using a permanent marker or similar. That way on your next mix you can just fill the bucket to the line quickly using the hose, knowing you'll have the correct amount of water and not having to measure it out each time. Also try to mix close to where you'll be pouring, I was in the garage 10 seconds from the yard, making it a quick back and forth. Having a second person also really helps as they can be mixing whilst you pour, or vice versa. Sadly I had no friends so was mixing alone, it was only a small space to pour though, so not too bad.

With my first load of water measured out I emptied that into my mixing bucket and then filled my water bucket back up ready for the second mix. In the mixing bucket I then emptied a full bag of the screed and began mixing it with the paddle mixer for a few minutes, so that everything was combined and I had a smooth lump free consistency. Heading to the yard I started in one of the far corners and just poured the screed out letting it flow where it liked returning to the garage to mix the next.

My water was all ready, so straight in the mixing bucket it went before refilling my water bucket then adding the screed to the mixing bucket. I repeated the mixing and pouring procedure 5 times, once for each bag, making sure to pour it carefully and try to evenly coat the yard in the screed, allowing it to flow where it needed to get the best level. I also have a spiked roller to aid with this, its just attached to a brush handle and you can roll it across the screed to help it flow together and even out, as well as remove any air bubbles that may arise from the pours.

I left the section in front of the door until last so i didn't have to walk through wet screed to get back into the house once I'd finished. I was also extremely careful around the drain area when poring so that my barrier didn't fail and I lost all my screed down the drain.

With the final pour done I left the screed to set. It sets very quickly which is why its important to be quick mixing and pouring and its hard enough to walk on usually within 4 hours, depending on air temp, mix viscosity etc. I left mine for a few days as I was back at work and wasn't sure what to do next to finish it.

After much deliberation on what to do next I decided to tile the yard floor. I was originally just going to paint the screed with garage floor or epoxy paint, but wanted something a bit nicer looking.

I considered paving it again and ordered samples, but for nice slabs, not just concrete impression like before, it was going to be £500+ which was ridiculous for such a small area. After scouring online and looking at various samples I managed to find some porcelain floor tiles instead, which looked nice and wouldn't be that difficult to lay. Plus it turned out the website had priced them up wrong and I got them for like 80% less than they should have been, which was nice.

The tiles I had chosen were a light grey, 300 x 600mm and I worked out I'd need about 53 for my 9.5m yard.

(( 0.3m x 0.6m = 0.18m) (0.18m / 9.5m = 52.8 tiles) so ordered 58, 10% extra just in case of any breakages or extra cuts I'd need.

To fix the tiles I'd got some exterior floor tile adhesive, along with some grout and also bought some twist tile levellers to help the laying process go much smoother.

Before starting to lay the tiles I first marked out the floor to find where best to start and make the least amount of cuts.

I originally marked a centre line along the length of the yard, but this meant having cut tiles at both the top and bottom ends, so I moved the line around 150mm up meaning I could then use more whole tiles instead.

With a centre line marked I could then mark a vertical line in the centre 90 degrees to the horizontal one to ensure the tiles are laid as square as possible.

To get the line square I first drew a circle on the horizontal line from the centre point, It didn't matter how big a circle and I just used a circle ruler I had to do this.

With the circle marked I could then use a piece of string and a marker to mark two crosses that I could draw my vertical centre line through. To get the crosses I cut a piece of string the distance from the top wall to the right and left points of the edge of the circle along the horizontal centre line.

Attaching the marker to the string and anchoring the other end under a brick at the mark on the circles edge, I could then draw an arc across the floor from both sides of the circle and where those arcs intersected one another would be where my vertical line would pass through.

I did the same for the bottom wall, which was a slightly longer string as I'd moved my horizontal centre line up 150mm, but with both sets of arcs drawn I had two crosses I could intersect a vertical line through to get my start position for tiling.

With my lines marked I laid out a few tiles to check I was happy with the positioning and to assess where I need to make cuts.

With the floor all marked I planned to start tiling in the centre of my yard from where my two centre lines crossed. These lines gave me 4 boxes on my floor, top left, bottom left, top right and bottom right and I'd be lining the first tile up in the bottom right corner of the top left box.

To begin I was just going to lay whole tiles and any tiles I came across that needed to be cut I would do later once all full tiles were laid.

To lay down the adhesive I had a 10mm notched trowel to apply the adhesive flat using one edge of it, then scrape it off using the notched edge leaving raised ridges to lay the tile on top of.

Mixing the adhesive was very similar to how I mixed the screed, except instead of actual measurements it was a ratio mix, in this case 3.5 parts adhesive to 1 part water, which I figured out was roughly half a bag of adhesive to one 2000ml jug of water.

Now again the day I chose to lay the tiles the weather was an unbelievable 30 degrees. I live right on the coast 100 yards from the beach and its always cooler, but this day it was extra warm which made the tiling phase a bit of a nightmare. I probably should have waited for cooler weather, but we were forecast rain the next week and didn't want to wait to finish the floor.

The main issue the heat caused was setting my adhesive very, very quickly. The bag stated I'd have around a 30 minute pot life once mixed, but I came to realise that was about 8 minutes, if I was lucky in the 30 degree heat, I was in the shade as well! Never the less I cracked on.

I mixed half a bag at a time adding the 2000ml of water to the bucket and dumping in the adhesive, then quickly mixing it with my paddle mixer so it was a smooth lump free paste. Once mixed it was a race to get it down and used up before it all set in my bucket.

I started as planned in the middle of my floor, laying down adhesive enough to cover an area for 2 tiles to sit on, using the flat edge of my float to put the adhesive down, running the notched side back over to get the ridges. I also 'back buttered' each tile to aid adhesion and levelling once laying down the tiles, applying adhesive to the back of each tile in the same manner I was applying it to the floor.

With adhesive on both surfaces I could lay the first tile, lining up the corner of it with my two centre lines in the middle of my floor. With it laid down flat and checked for level, I could then back butter my next tile and lay it down next to it, ensuring the ends of the tile were in line with each other to maintain the straight grout lines as much as possible. I also ensured they were both roughly the same height with one another adding/removing adhesive from underneath to achieve this.

I then used my twist tile levellers between the tiles to give me a 2mm grout line all the way around, they then are rotated 90 degrees so the T shape of the spacers is under both tile edges, the top of the spacer then screws down to clamp both tiles together making them level with one another. I used one of these spacers at every corner on every edge, 8 per tile effectively.

With two tiles laid I carried on in the same way laying adhesive on the floor, then on the tile, before laying it down and adding my spacers. I mixed more adhesive as I ran out and made sure to keep quickly rinsing my tools so the adhesive didn't set hard on them.

In all honesty this bit was very hard work, the adhesive was setting so fast, literally setting whilst mixing it. At one stage my mixing bucket just set too hard to carry on using it or the remaining mixture inside and I had to get a second smaller bucket to carry on, which made it harder to mix as it would slop out if I wasn't careful.

Photos of this stage were impossible to take as I just had no time, it was just mix, lay, level and carry on before my adhesive set. Amazingly I did get all the whole tiles down and in place and because the adhesive was setting so fast I could walk on them pretty quickly afterwards, so I wasn't tiled in to a corner.

With the adhesive setting so quick and the floor pretty solid 30-40 mins after laying, I decided to carry on and finish by laying all the tiles I needed to cut.

Most of these were half tiles at one end, but I also had some round the drain to do and one that a toilet soil pipe went straight through.

Before making a start on the cuts I made sure to clean all my tools and the bucket, so there wasn't solid adhesive on them when I came to lay the cut tiles later on. I also made a start removing the spacers between the tiles so they didn't set completely solid in the floor and become a nightmare to remove.

This just involved unscrewing the spacers nuts, then turning the orange handles 90 degrees and pulling them out from between the joints, cleaning any residue left behind on the tiles face.

I first started with the tiles to be cut for the right side of the floor next to the garage. In order to mark the tiles to be cut I laid a full tile over the last full tile I laid in that row, then sitting another full tile on top of that I could slide it up to the wall, with tile spacers in place against the wall to account for my grout line and mark along the edge onto the full tile underneath. This would give me a line to cut along, ensuring I had the correct size tile to fit in the space where it needed to go.

I could then cut along this line using my angle grinder and tile cutter with a diamond tile cutting blade in to get a clean cut.

I repeated this process all the way along for each tile that needed to be cut at the end of each row of tiles.

For the drain tiles I used the same method to get the size and then measured out on the tiles where I needed to cut for the drain opening. The final small tile in the corner by the drain I just measured and cut manually as there was a drainpipe in the way preventing use of the other method.

The last tile I needed to cut was for the soil pipe which was more tricky. I started by laying the tile over the last full tile laid next to the pipe and marked where the centre of the pipe met the edge of the tile. I then moved the tile to sit against the wall and slid it up so the left side of the tile was against the pipe and marked the centre of the pipe on that edge.

Drawing lines across the tile from these marks I got an intersection where the centre of the pipe would need to be cut out.

The soil pipe was 110mm in diameter and I had a diamond blade for my grinder of a similar size 115mm. With a circle drawn on the tile where the cut needed to be made I could carefully lower my grinders blade over the circle and roll the blade round as it were, over the surface of the tile, to slowly cut away a circular shape in the tile.

After eventually cutting through I could then cut the tile in half through the centre of the circle and check for fit around the soil pipe.

First results were good, bit of a rough fit, so I just fine tuned the circle using my grinder in the same way, flat over the face of the tile to remove minimal material until both halves fit cleanly around the pipe and in place against the other surrounding tiles.

With all my cut tiles now ready to fit, it was just a case of mixing some more adhesive up and laying them in place, using the spacers to get the grout lines equally spaced and the tiles as level with the others surrounding them as possible.

With all the tiles down I cleaned up any mess on the surface of them with a damp sponge and plastic scraper, cleaned all my tools and after a 20 minute wait went back to remove the rest of the tile spacers before they set in place. I then bid a hasty retreat, absolutely exhausted back in to the house.

Now that my tiles had set in place it was time to finish the floor and grout the joints.

I started by giving the floor a good sweep down to remove any dust and dirt and used a scraper to take off any little bits of adhesive left behind that I'd missed the day before after laying.

Once the surface was clean I mixed up my grout using the paddle mixer on a slow speed. I'd chosen a dark grey colour to compliment the tiles and this was a mix ratio of 3:1 similar to the tile adhesive.

As I wouldn't need much grout from the 5Kg bag I'd bought I used an old coleslaw tub to mix about 1Kg, 3 cups of the grout to 1 cup of water in a bucket. Thankfully it wasn't as hot doing this as I'd waited until late evening so it was cool and I was hopeful the hour pot life stated on the bag would be close to what I'd get.

To apply the grout into the joints I used a flexible grout blade. A plastic handle with a rubber flexible edge. This made it really easy to force the grout in the joints, then remove the excess with the blade and repeat.

It only took me about 30 minutes in the end to grout the whole floor and around 15 mins after finishing I could wipe off the surface with a damp sponge to remove all the excess grout on the tile faces.

The bag reckoned 5 hours for the grout to set hard, so after another couple of hours I came back out with a damp floor mop and gave the whole floor a mop over, just to get rid of any final residue left behind.

The next day once the grout had set the floor was finished and looked really good. It had been hard work, but I'm glad I hadn't just stuck with the painted screed floor I originally planned.

Now that the floor was finished I wanted to address the walls. They were all rendered the same as the house and over the years had rust marks from screws and nails that were in them, dirt from plants and moss and generally didn't look the best from the house. I had already washed them before I'd started but they had got some dust and stuff back on from all the previous stages.

The wall of the garage also had an old access door in it which I had sealed up when we moved in and just left, so that didn't look great either.

I didn't just want to paint and leave them the same yellow colour of the house as it didn't really match my new tiled floor, neither did the texture of the render, regardless of colour.

To that end I decided to clad the two walls visible from the house in timber, the top wall shared with my neighbour and the garage wall with the door in.

I'd seen some fences before that had used short horizontal boards between posts, rather than the more traditional vertical ones and liked the look, so my plan was to get some boards and fix them horizontally to my walls with spacing in between each one.

Before cladding anything though I first tidied up the walls by giving them all a brush down and a quick coat of paint in the matching colour of the house. Although you wouldn't really see these two walls when I was done cladding, there would be like 20mm spaces between the boards, so you'd still see some of the wall maybe and I wanted it to be neat. I also sanded back the door and painted this the same colour as the walls to try and blend it in as much as possible.

For the horizontal timber I would attach to the walls I originally wanted to use thin strips of wood, something like a cedar or larch around 20mm x 45mm with a 20-25mm gap in between each one.

However as many of you will know, since COVID came around timber prices have gone astronomical and straight away I was priced out of the larch and cedar market and forced to look at redwood/pine instead. In fact when looking for timber online I priced some up at my usual supplier then went looking for something else on another site. In the space of 30 minutes that it took me to find the other item the cost of the timber in my cart had increased over 50%! What was £3.50 a 3.6m length was now up to £6.30 and since I'd calculated I'd need 28 lengths per wall, it was just out of the question and looking at other suppliers nearby similar things had happened, with prices on a par pretty much everywhere.

After much searching, calling around in my local area and looking at different timber options I eventually found an ad for some 150mm wide 3.6m long larch boards priced at only £3.50 about 35 minutes away. Since I'd only need 22 of these for what I wanted I quickly went and snapped some up, picking out the straightest I could find and ferrying them back home on my roof rack.

I planned to rip them down later on my table saw, so that I had 44, 75mm wide boards to make up for not being able to get my original 45mm ones.

To attach the boards to my walls I used some vertical batons screwed to the wall that I could then nail the boards to.

The batons were just 20mm x 35mm pressure treated softwood. I stood all of them up against the wall and marked the height for each one with a pen, before cutting to length on my chop saw.

I then fixed the two end batons to each wall first, drilling into the timber at the top and through to mark the wall behind. I could then drill out the wall using a masonry bit in my electric drill, before inserting a wall plug and screwing the top of the baton in place. Using my level I could the straighten up the batten, drilling through to mark the rest of the holes down the baton, securing it to the wall afterwards with plugs and screws.

With the two end batons in place I could then measure the distance between them to find the position of the remaining batons, so that they were equally spaced along the wall, drill and screw them in place.

As I previously said, after buying my boards I did plan to cut them all in half so I had a bunch of smaller, thinner 75mm boards. However after cutting a couple to length to check the size and position of my batons I liked the look of the wider board on the wall, plus it would save me a ton of work cutting them all and having to nail up twice as many, so it was a win win and I decided to stick with the wider boards.

After cutting that first board I made sure it would fit all the way up the wall so I didn't have short boards if the wall ran out any. Thankfully that wasn't the case and I could cut them all the same length, 3.45m.

I just marked each board to length individually then positioned them in the chop saw to cut off the excess. I made sure any rough, wonky ends were cut off before I measured and cut them to final length, so I had square edges to sit up against my walls.

Starting with the top wall, I cut 11 boards down and laid them on the floor out the back of the garage.

The boards were all untreated, rough sawn and a lot of them had black marks on from being stood in the yard for so long. This was fine for the back of the boards you wouldn't see, but for the faces I wanted to tidy them up and gave them a quick going over with my belt sander and some 40 grit paper to remove all the marks and take off any really rough edges and splinters.

With the faces sanded I then clamped each board in my Superjaws so I could sand back the edges and slightly round over the corners so it was less splintery when touching.

This was a bit laborious, as sanding always is, but improved the look of each board no end.

With the first 11 boards sanded I then gave the back of each one a coat of exterior varnish to protect them from the elements. My yard is pretty sheltered anyway, but I want them to last so it seemed like a good idea. I left the fronts untreated for now as I will apply some protection oil to those once they're all up.

Once the varnish had dried I could then start fixing the boards to the wall. I started at the bottom placing the first board on the floor and placing the level on the top. Using some plastic wedges underneath I then levelled up the board and nailed through into the batons behind using some stainless steel nails so they wouldn't rust and stain the boards over time.

The stainless nails were old poly top ones I had left over from a uPVC cladding job around my garage door. They were ideal for this as they were serrated to help prevent the boards pulling off, I simply just removed the poly head with a pair of pliers beforehand.

Using some off cuts of the baton as a spacer, I then placed the next board on top of the first with the spacers in between to give me an even gap all the way along. I nailed along the board as before and repeated the process until I reached the top of the wall.

Now the back wall was clad I could move across to the garage wall. The boards here were shorter at only 2.65m and I cut them in exactly the same way as before. I then sanded and varnished them the same as well, ready to be nailed to the wall.

The boards went on in the same way as the first set, the only difference on the garage wall was the shower valve was mounted here and I needed to make a slight adjustment to one board so it sat over the pipes running through the wall.

This was simply done by marking the pipe positions on the boards then drilling out a semi-circle at the bottom edge of one board using a 16mm drill bit. Thankfully the pipes mostly fell between a space in the boards, otherwise I would have had to remove the shower and drill through the board before re-fitting.

With that board modified and nailed on it was just a case of nailing up the remaining boards until I reached the top of the wall.

In the far left corner of my yard the wall has a higher part that steps down to the main wall, so for here I extended some batons up to each step and then cut my boards at the correct length to hide the wall behind. This was done in the same way as the full length boards and just finished off the wall so there wasn't a random rendered bit showing.

With all the boards in place I then used some Osmo 420 UV protection oil to prevent the boards from greying in the future and help with water protection as well. This just rolled and brushed on and I left it to dry once all the boards were coated.

With the walls clad and dry I was now onto the remaining little jobs, the fun stuff.

There was an old plastic washing line that ran diagonally across the yard and we had used this to hang some little solar lights on previously, as well as some washing in the summer months.

As I wanted to keep the solar lights a feature and possibly use the line for clothes in the future I decided to upgrade it and extend it. That way I could hang extra lights along my back wall.

I planned to run the line in the same way as the current one, but instead of stop it in the corner, run it parallel along the back wall and fix it to the garage on the opposite side.

I had bought a stainless steel kit to replace the old line, so it wouldn't rust and also give me the extra length I needed, incorporating some tensioners to keep the line tight rather than me having to pull on it a lot and try tie a knot to keep it tight like the current one.

After the old line was down I replaced its hook fixings at the wall with the new stainless ones simply screwing therm in where the old ones had come from. I also added a new one in the wall where my extra run of line would end up.

With the fixing points in I then made a loop in one end of the cable and used the included fixings to crimp the loop firmly in place using pliers. The cable first passed through an aluminium sleeve, then wrapped around a loop form, which sat inside the eye bolt screwed to the wall. After passing the cable around the form it then went back through the sleeve and crimped in place, cutting the excess tail end with some wire cutters.

I could now pass the other end of the cable through the eye bolt on the opposite wall of the house and then run it back to my new eye bolt on the garage wall.

At the garage wall I installed one of the tensioners, making sure it was fully open (at its longest) and I could then make a second loop in the cable the same way as the first, making sure to pull all the excess cable though (around 6m) so that it was relatively taught from wall to wall. Once crimped and located over the tensioner I could tighten the tensioner to pull the cable as tight as I wanted, so the line had no sag before cutting off the 6m or so of excess cable. I made sure the tensioner was fully open earlier, so at this point I had more of the threads to use. If I'd left it short it would have reached its max tension sooner, but would not have tightened the line enough.

All that was left to do now was add my solar lights back and some new ones the same, but with coloured glass.

Although I had solar lights in place I wanted to add some extra mains powered ones that were much brighter to light up the yard if using it at night for socialising and I chose to use a 13m strip of LEDs to achieve this.

I used the mains power socket outside to power them and ran the lights along the gaps in between my boards.

I had bought IP67 rated lights so they were fully waterproof for outdoor use, however my first job was to add a little waterproof box under the mains power socket outside to hide the LED lights voltage converter. This had little air holes in and wasn't waterproof, as it was designed to go inside for some reason, bit of a pain, but all the mains powered ones I looked at seemed to have this or a massive transformer. The LEDs themselves would be waterproof but all the power supplies seemed to need to be inside or sealed up.

The box I simply screwed to the wall and placed the converter inside before clicking it closed. I added a little bit of silicone around the top of the box just to make sure it'd be fully water tight as I didn't want anything getting inside.

With the box sealed I could now install the lights themselves. I started by feeding them up the wall behind my boards until the end of the light strip reached my starting point, which was my second to last board along the top of the back wall. I then ran the lights along the gap between the boards fixing them in place with 10mm cable clips hammered into each baton that I'd previously nailed the boards to.

The lights ran around the corner, then all the way along the adjacent garage wall until I reached the end. I then fed the lights back down behind my boards, giving a 4 board gap between the runs and did a return run back towards the power box, nailing again at each baton location to hold the lights in place.

For added functionality, in the house where the outdoor socket plugged in I added a smart socket adapter that connected to my Amazon Alexa. After setting up the adapter and naming it Yard, I could then just ask my Echo device in the kitchen to "turn on/off yard" and the LEDs would light up or go out.

This saved me the hassle of having to turn them on manually by going in the dining room each time I wanted light in the yard.

Now that the yard was all but finished it was time to put the planters and things that I'd kept, back out there along with some other new stuff.

The old boot sink that was sat on the brick pillars before I decided to mount on the opposite wall as the yard gets more sun there.

To hold it in place I used some coach bolts held in the wall using wall plugs, using the two mounting holes already in the sink to hang it from. I also screwed a wooden baton to the wall in the same way underneath the sink to support the bottom and take some of the weight off of the top wall fixings.

For my other larger sink planters I made a couple of raised shelf type things.

For one I used an old marble hearth and some fence posts I had lying around.

I simply cut 4 pieces from the posts to length, to match that of the marbles width, making some legs. Using my bench planer I then squared up the legs and removed the old dirty exterior of the posts in the process.

With 4 pieces cut and planed I then joined them together in pairs, screwing them through from the top piece into the bottom one. As these were timber and would be sat on the tiles outside in all weathers I also gave the legs a coat of outdoor varnish and on the bottom used some old nylon board, so that there would be a waterproof surface between the timber and the floor, simply nailing in place with some zinc nails.

To hold the marble top to the legs I used a ceramic drill bit to drill 4 holes through the top of the marble that I could pass some stainless screws through into the legs underneath. I drilled very carefully and kept the hole wet to aid cutting and keep the heat down to prevent cracking. I then used a larger ceramic bit to cut a hole big enough so the screw heads would sit below the surface of the marble, allowing the sink to sit flat when in position.

The second stand I used some off cuts of the cladding boards. I cut 3 long lengths on the chop saw and then cut 8 shorter lengths to go between them to hold it together, staggering the short board locations so that I could screw it all together.

I marked each long board where the short boards would go and drilled pilot holes within these marks. I could then clamp the pieces in place and screw through to hold all the pieces together.

I repeated this until all the short boards were screwed in place then screwed on the last long piece to finish it off.

To water proof the stand I then used some water repellent sealer which I liberally applied using a brush allover the stand, leaving it to dry before placing it out in the yard.

The last thing I made were some little plant pot shelves that sat in my walls in between the gaps, between my boards.

Again I used my off cuts to make these little shelves, simply screwing two off cuts of baton to the underside of a short piece of the board to make some legs. These would then slide between the boards fixed to the walls, I could then screw a brace piece of baton across the legs that would sit up against the face of the board once the shelf was in place to help support it.

The idea of these shelves was that they were not fixed to the wall, so I could move them around as I wanted, placing them anywhere on the walls where there was a gap between the boards.

With all the work done all there was left to do was give the yard a final clean down and put some new plants in. They need a few more months for them to grow and fill out the space a bit more but they look good planted in and add some colour to the yard.

I put a big feature plant in the sink on the wall along with some heather's and succulents in the larger sinks sat on the stands.

A monkey tree finishes it off stood in the corner by the cladding.

I'm very happy with how this turned out, its a complete transformation from before and although it was more work and cost me more that I initially planned, it was worth the extra to get it like it is.

Thanks for reading through, if you got this far, bit of a mission I know and if you just looked at the pictures then thanks for that too.

Here's some final shots of the finished yard in daylight and night time.

Enjoy!

See you on the next one