We Planned a DIY Backyard Renovation. Here’s What Really Happened

"By this time next year," my husband said, the morning after our wedding, "we’ll have the backyard completely renovated."

"We’ll have a party," I said. "An anniversary party," he agreed.

Larry and I were sitting underneath a somewhat shabby overhang on the edge of our garage, watching the sun rise over the garden where we had gotten married the previous evening. Our DIY backyard wedding—which included 60 guests, a chamber choir, a potluck dinner and a $15 eyelet lace dress—had been so successful that we felt like we could do anything.

So we committed, in the way that one commits on the first day of a marriage, to completing the backyard renovations by June 2025. Larry began making concrete molds for our patio in September, with the goal of pouring concrete in October. That’s when we learned that fall was one of the busiest times of the year for outdoor contractors, with everyone hoping to get their projects done before the winter. We weren’t able to get anyone in to do the initial pour until late November, at which point Larry decided that there wasn’t any reason he couldn’t learn to make and pour concrete himself.

The winter weather held long enough for Larry and a friend to do a second pour in December, at which point we decided that there wasn’t any reason I couldn’t learn to make and pour concrete as well. So, when the spring came, I put on my overalls and got to work.

Mixing and pouring concrete is remarkably similar to making a cake, in the sense that you need to add the right amount of water, stir everything around really well, pour it evenly and get all of the air bubbles out before it sets. You’ll want to avoid slopping too much concrete over the sides of the mold, for the same reason you’d try to avoid getting globs of wet cake on the outside of your baking dish, but anything that gets spilled can be cleaned up afterward.

It’s also an excellent project for a newly married couple, in part because it allows you and your spouse to work together without getting hung up on the persnicketiness of, say, hanging wallpaper. There’s no tiny little flower that has to match up with another tiny little flower while one of you is standing on a chair with the weight of the paper and paste dangling from the ends of your hands, which are, of course, held over your head, and everything starting to dry before you can get the seam in place, and there’s always that one little air bubble that never gets ironed out, and whose fault was that, anyway?

Concrete, despite or perhaps because of its strength, is incredibly forgiving. Which gave Larry and me the strength to forgive ourselves when it became obvious that we would not have our renovation completed in time for a first anniversary party in June 2025. "And now that this is becoming a multiyear project," Larry said, "I think the next component that needs to be completed is the carport."

Our house came with a single-car garage, which Larry had already turned into a tool shed and workspace. Our single car is parked in the driveway. The carport, which would be built in place of the overhang we had been sitting under the day after our wedding, would hold our pontoon boat during the winter, so Larry and I wouldn’t have to pay the marina to winterize and store it.

Larry estimated that it would take two weeks to build the carport. It took two months. During that time, he calculated the optimal angle for drainage, since the roof needed to be both high enough to accommodate the boat and low enough to line up with the garage. He had maybe 10 degrees of wiggle room, and ended up giving the boat just four inches of clearance. Larry also carefully measured the notches required to make the rafters flush—there were 19 of them, and each needed to be precise—and designed and printed 3D jigs to help him get the job done."It turns out I didn’t need the jigs, once I figured out how to cut the wood," Larry explained, "but I’m not sure I could have figured out how to cut the wood without making the jigs first."

Almost a year to the day of our first concrete pour, we had a group of friends over to the house to roll the pontoon boat into the carport. This couldn’t be done with a winch because we had to take the boat around a corner, which meant manipulating it back and forth like a piece of furniture, with six people pushing and pulling and me shoving chocks under the wheels every time we paused to recalculate the angle.

We actually got the angle wrong, that first evening—both the horizontal and the vertical, since it became obvious that unless we packed part of our backyard with bricks and dirt and any other material we could scrounge up, the boat would roll ever-so-slightly and then inevitably down an incline that could take it straight into our neighbor’s house. So Larry moved piles of dirt from our patio excavation and placed them in the necessary spot, and we invited everyone back over for a second round, and this time the boat rolled precisely into its place.

"How long did that take?" Larry asked a young boy who had come along with his dad and had been instructed to stay out of the way and keep the time. "Twenty-seven minutes!" he replied. Yes, on the second try, after a two-week estimate became a two-month project, after the idea of renovating a backyard by an anniversary deadline became a lifetime dedication to our garden and our marriage and our agreement to do as much as we can ourselves, because that’s how we learn. And we still feel the way we did, the morning after our marriage—as if we could do anything.

Top photo by Ellinnur Bakarudin/500px via Getty Images

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