EP 2: Big Dig Energy | THE BACKYARD BUILD

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Previously on the backyard build, we have big plans for this side of our backyard. Starting today with the greenhouse area. So, there’s going to be a nice walkway down here, two or three steps coming down with some seating down there. It goes down into a pond. I think it’s very feasible and we’ll get it done in probably 2 weeks. This looks really bad. Um, so much grass, eh? I know this is going to be a lot of work. This is the start of my walkway. We’ve never seen the yard from this view before. I’m so excited for what’s to come. [Music] [Music] Still just digging. Going to be digging for a while. It’s quiet. Too quiet. Welcome to episode two of the backyard build. My name is Sabrina and this is my co-host, Andrew. Your what? Co-host. Oh, co-star, co-host. Moth. We have a lot of work to do. We’re going to take you along with us. I hope you enjoy. Did we say in the last episode we have to step this? Uh, no. We have a lot to tell them. So, originally we talked about just sloping the walkway and maybe transitioning the slope, but it’s just too steep. So, what we’re going to end up doing is every 20 ft we’re going to do a 6 in step because the nice um stone steps come in 6 in. So, that’s just works out for the grade. It makes these less steep. So, I have all the strings set up for top of pa and I’m measuring down 10 in from that to give us a nice uh gravel bed and then enough for your high performance bedding and then the height of your pa so that it all stays put. Okay, that’s pretty good cuz there’s our walkway, right? Four feet and then we have a foot for the stone there. We’re staring. Imagine we found oil. Would we be rich? Oh, yes. By the bucket load. [Music] Hey, what’s this? Lots of metal out here. So much metal. You think there’s a car under here? Maybe. [Music] [Music] Oh yeah, that’s at least 10. So I just got to clean this up. Clean this up. Make sure it’s kind of somewhat flat. And then we’ve done one whole step and we’re looking pretty good. If you want, you can saw all these roots. [Music] You good? [Music] Hey, what’s that? This is something good. Oh, another one of these, too. I think I think this is a good spot, actually. Made in Corona, Canada. Look. Made in Canada. That’s a Corona bottle. Oh, made in Corona, Canada. Yeah. This is the knob off of an old stove. Oh, wow. Bunch of shattered stuff there. What’s this? An old action figure. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Look. It’s the top of an old car. Like a toy. Like a toy car. You think there’s a car under here? I have a good feeling about today. Find your uh What were you looking for? A key. A piece of jewelry would be cool to find. Corona bottle. Oh my gosh. And look, it still has the cork in it. This is just so exciting. A bracket from a bed frame. Oh my gosh. That’s what all the springs are from. Yeah. An old coil mattress. You go to the dump or bury it in my backyard. I’m going to bury it. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] The bucket full. No. Hurry up. [Music] Oh my god. Get it back in that tractor. Why? You’re going to do a full bucket. Stand back. All right. [Music] Okay. I think I’m good. Is it full? No. Then keep going. Why does this have to be perfect, though? What’s this? A propeller. Oh, that’s an old uh like farm equipment. This is what dragged behind the tractor to like a the tiller. That is so fun. Probably behind a horse. This is where all the farm equipment’s coming up. Yeah. All the metal. That’s pretty cool, actually, to find that. Oh my gosh. Look. Oh yeah. What’s that from? Probably an exhaust system. Another metal something. Did you purposely wear all green? Even your socks? Well, I already had green shorts on and I wanted to wear a green shirt, so then I put on green socks. Looks good. Is it too much? No, it’s cool. I like it. Since when do you care anyway? I don’t care. Life would be easier if we were beauty influencers cuz we wouldn’t be digging up our backyard. I know. I should start that. You want to be a beauty influencer? Yeah, I would try it out. Okay. Make your pitch to the brands. L’Oreal, if you’re listening, I could really use some sunscreen. I work outdoors all the time. Wait, I need Why L’Oreal? That’s the first thing I thought of. Yeah, who does sunscreen then? The sun Hawaiian Tropic. Okay, do another one. Neutrogena. I work outside in the sun. I need to protect my skin. And I need some. I would be great to promote your creams and SPF high moisturizers. Let me know what you think. You and Tate McCrae is the face of Neutrogena. She’d probably fall in love with me. Okay, so walkway has been dug. Now we’re just working on figuring out how to end the walkway and then transition into the pond area. Line it up on the stake. Okay, now remember that spot right here. It was right there, babe. Okay. So, that is square off of it. Off of that line. Okay. Okay. If we go 6 by3. Okay, babe. It’s there. Let go of that in line with it. But right there. Okay. Right there. [Music] More digging. Yeah. So that’ll be that cute. That’s so fun. Does that leave room for a gazebo custom built by Andrew Pune? Yeah, it’s going to be 9 by 12. Okay, so now for the pond. Option one, waterfall right here. trickles down and then it can fall into it here. And then the low like over here is where the like skimmer will be basically. So from here you’d see it from the fire pit. Obviously you’d see it from the vegetable garden, but you don’t sit in the vegetable garden. You would kind of see it from the sunken area. Well, if you’re sitting here, you don’t see much of anything, which is fine. It’s fine. But you would hear it. The other option is it starts over here trickles down and comes into the pond from this side which is nice for if you’re sitting here sitting here you’ll see like the full thing where we finished the interlock circle we do the flag stone pavers like over here you can use one as like a bridge over the stream I just think that’s cool I know you love that idea I think that that would be fun too and from here you would what’s kind of nice is you would hear it better from here Yeah. And you would see it from the like pool deck area. Like at least you’d see something cuz you wouldn’t you would only ever see that if you’re over here. Yeah. If you’re standing where right here. So maybe it should go here. So we still have to remove all this then. All this. Dig this down. And then this has to get ready so that we could do papers on it too. Yeah. Which that’s not much. That’s easy. imagining two chairs, little little musca chairs, and we’re sitting like this and feeding our koiish like this. We’re like face to face with the koi. But we’re sitting like this and they’re like swimming right up right underneath. It’s like a little dock, but it’s like pavers. Yeah, it’ll be close to it. Like it’ll be it’ll be close. So, we have to still build a gazebo, too. That’s fine, cuz we have to do that before we do pavers. I mean, I It’s ideal. [Music] Okay. So then over here and tell me know when I’m at about 10 in about there. About there. Yeah. Is that close? You can bring it down a little, but yeah, it’s generally close. About there. Now we got to mark our six again. Now I need you to this for roughly 10. So now we got to do our 6 in again. probably bigger than six. So now we have to check 10 there. This is way out of the ground here, eh? Seems a little high here, doesn’t it? Now we just need Oh, no. We’re going to need to uh Yeah, that works out here pretty good to be able to step onto there cuz some of that’s going to get dug out after. That should work out pretty good then. Like that’ll be all the the heights, right? The height works with this, which is what I was kind of worried about because if you wanted to walk off off of here onto there, I didn’t want this to be lower than that or like way higher. Yeah. But that works out pretty good. So, here’s your first step. The walkway is still sloped because like like I said, this is a pretty drastic slope on our lawn. So, we have to still slope the walkway, but we can reduce the slope by 6 in every 20 ft with a step, if that makes sense. And it works out the height that the pavers are above grade everywhere, which is nice because we’re going to be putting some fresh top soil and probably tilling this up a bit. So you don’t want your pavers below grade. So you keep coming this way. It’s a nice height there. Steps down. It’s still nice. Then you come to the last step. And when we ordered our material, we originally were going to do 120 ft of walkway. Um we chose to stop at 100 ft because you don’t need 120 ft walkway. You know what I mean? What I did is I dug out an extra area like 6 by13. Um, so this is a like a little patio spot and we’re going to be building a gazebo here because we’re going to end up putting the pond right there. So it’ll be a nice spot to put a couple chairs, little table, and sit here and look at the pond, feed the fish, and get up really close and watch them. So yeah, this is actually going to be pavers this whole area here, like all the way out to here. And then the pond will be there and the waterfall stream will start up there and it’ll trickle down in and we’ll have a little pond here. [Music] [Music] This is the fabric. It’s called lifetime hardscape fabric. If you see landscape fabric and there’s like the cloth and there’s the one that’s kind of like feels plasticky. This is the one that feels plasticky. It stabilizes the ground underneath the pavers. We’re not typically landscape fabric people in your gardens, but given this project, it’s what you have to do. [Music] This is a sand and gravel mix. It’s called granular A or a gravel. It’s right here. It’s right there. This is a gr sand and gravel mix. A gravel. Granular A. It’s good for packing under driveways and patios and stuff. You’re doing a good job, Akie. [Music] Ah, I stepped in dog poo. I can smell myself. Dog poo. Yeah. [Music] You could do that if you want. Now I’ll go get some more. [Music] That’s like level. Now, let’s bring it down there. This is high. So, that’s good. That’s what we want. But yeah, we got to put a ton more. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] your boobs. I like that you tucked your t-shirt into your shorts. That’s perfect. [Music] Check it. You’re going to laugh at that when you watch it back. Just check it. Andrew always watches himself back and he goes, “Was that sped up? Do I actually move like that? [Music] Let’s see how heavy these are. These are heavier than the other ones. Not even joking, bro. [Music] [Music] Go down. [Music] Hold on. A little little more. Okay, there we go. That’s great, eh? [Music] 10. It’s not leaning too much, is it? Nope. Looks good. Okay, so I’ll go get another one. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Get out of here. [Music] That looks good from the front now with it all broken like that. Okay, now catch me. Ready? I love that. That’s so cute, babe. That was so fun. [Music] It doesn’t fit right. It’s a little too straight. [Music] Oh, wait. Yeah, you might want to move. It hit me in the forehead. Really? [Music] A feels like old time setting the camera up at the front yard. My mom and stepdad stopped by today and they were saying how a year ago this week they came by to see the house when we were working on ditching the split and the front porch was all plywood. That’s so funny. And today they got to do the whole tour and the whole house is finished. Done. And they’re watching this video right now. Yes. Hello, Maria. Hello, Maria. Hello, Tom. [Music] Oh, this is hot. We’ve been in full sun all day. I know. One, two, three. Good job, babe. Okay, well, let’s step back and look at our master because this is one tier done. We didn’t even use a full skid. Looks really good. Looks like a wall of stone. Nice, beautiful walkway. Garden looks good to me. What we were going to do is we were going to leave 4′ 6 for the 4ft walkway. So we have like 3 in on either side, right? Yeah. So that’s the walkway to from there to there. Okay, perfect. And then we were going to go another six, right? Which will get us to here. So that’s the length of it. We’re going to have two in the garden. Yeah. But should it be out here so that it’s off the patio there, too? I think so. Should be off the patio both places. Yeah. And then just have it on it in that first far corner. Do we have to? Unless we make it really big. Really? Well, how much bigger could it be? It’s just a couple inches. Here’s the thing. You’d be 13 ft basically. And then to have it out, you’d basically be 14 ft. Yeah. This way. This I think’s 13. It would have to be like for 14 by 14 kind of. Is that bad? No. I mean, we can reduce this to make it fit inside. Well, I think that 14 by 14 is fine. Like I would rather the patio be bigger and then make the pergola match. Well, the pergola you’re going to do first. I know. I know. But I think I think Are we Are we allowed to go 14 by 14? Oh, okay. There’s rules that don’t allow that. Yeah. How big are you allowed to go? Unless it’s a shed, you can go a little bigger. It’s like 160 ft, but anything else is 108. Even if it’s like a pergola, it’s not an enclosed structure. Because it’s a structure, it doesn’t matter. We’ll just do it. Don’t worry about it. You got to go more than that. More than 14 for the post cuz the posts are 5 and 1/2 each. Okay. Hold on. The alternative here is that these posts are in the garden. These posts are on the patio just sitting on it. You’d cut the interlock around it. Let me check Pinterest real quick. See? And like that’s the pathway that leads up to it. Yeah. Okay. I’m going to show you guys something. Can you see this example of somebody who did something similar? It’s like a walkway that leads to the seating area with a pergola over top. It’s going to be beautiful. [Music] That’s the other. [Music] I feel exhausted. Really? Do you? No. I’ll be honest. I think we got a lot done. We spread and packed 8 yards of gravel. Mhm. And laid 20 ft of armor stone and dug four post holes. It’s so hard to tell until I start editing the footage what we actually got done. So cool to think that one day this is going to be a patio with a beautiful pergle over top climbing roses and it’s going to look magical. It sure is. Maybe by next week. Ping. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]