Gorgeous Backyard Makeover In 1 Day For $168

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Today I am going to show you how we transformed this trashed area in our backyard into this beautiful, easy, lowmaintenance oasis in only 5 hours of work. And shockingly, it only cost us about $168 to do this project. [Music] And that cost includes these huge concrete pavers. We also had some other work to do around the yard. And so I’ll take you along with me as I get all of that work done as well. Everyone loves a great before and after. and you’re definitely going to want to see this one. So, let’s get started. [Music] Before I even get started on the huge makeover in that disaster area, this area full of grass and weeds was just bothering me too much. I didn’t want to keep walking past this as I was getting the other project done. So, I’m just going to pull these weeds out really quick. And my grass really needs to be mowed. It’s grown so high from all the rain that we had. And I figured it’s better I mow it now so it make it easier to walk through the grass without being attacked by tons of mosquitoes. I have just a few weeds left inside this rose bush. And then it looks nice and clean after that. I have all of these really neat concrete statues in here that I think I might use later on in this video. But let’s get started on mowing. I quickly realized that these sweet potato vines had grown way out of control and were blocking me from mowing the edge of my lawn. So, I’m just going to stop and clean these up really quick before I continue with mowing. [Music] [Music] Under Nino’s careful supervision, we got this lawn mower in no time. [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music] [Music] And once the lawn was finished, it was time to weed whack all the edges. is hey. [Music] We had a beautiful visitor come and check out the butterfly garden while we were working out here. Check out this monarch butterfly. [Music] [Music] Now that everything else has been done in the yard, it’s time to focus on this hot mess that we have behind our garage. There is so much to do here. It’s hard to even know where to start. And it even kind of looks like it’s snowing from all the flowers falling from this crepe myrtle tree. We have tons of weeds, lots of tools that need to be put away, trash, you name it. It’s all stockpiled back here. And we need to get started cleaning it out. We’re going to be putting down some very large 24 in x 24 in pavers that are a little over $9 a piece, but we only need seven of them because they’re so large. We grabbed a couple of landscaping timbers, which are very cheap and affordable. I think around $4. And then we also grabbed four bags of concrete for this project. Everything that we needed ended up totaling at about $168. I planned this entire makeover to be super budget friendly because I wanted to make sure that a we could afford to do this and b that anybody who’s watching can save up pretty quickly to get a project like this done. I know we could all appreciate an area becoming easy to maintain and making it look beautiful on just a few pennies on the dollar compared to how much you would pay to have somebody actually landscape this space. Putting down concrete on your own can be really daunting and using these types of stepping stones really makes the job a totally beginner friendly DIY. The first thing that we’re going to do is empty everything out of the way so that we can um get some weed cloth put down on the ground under where we’re going to be having some mulch laid as well as our pathway. In this spot, I had three rose bushes, but two of them died off and one of them is on its way to dying off. So, we’re going to remove the dead ones and then I’m going to pull out the one that is barely hanging on and repot it later in the video and put it somewhere where it gets more sunlight. [Music] Now, I’m going to move all these bags of mulch up onto the planter so I can get them out of the way and give me some space to put down the weed cloth. Pretty quickly, I realized that these bags are covered in ants, so I had to throw them super fast to make sure I didn’t get bit by any of them. I was not going to let anything stop me from finishing this project. [Music] This beautiful crepe myrtle tree that is back here has some low-lying branches that I wanted to trim up just so that we can walk past here without getting slapped in the face by these little branches. [Music] Hey. Hey. [Music] Hey. This huge stack of metal chairs is actually something that we plan to keep. We use it all the time when we have people over for a barbecue for some extra seating. We just need to move everything out of the way, like I said, so we could get down that weed cloth on the ground. [Music] Hello. [Music] Hello. [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] Next, I want to clean out this little shed so I can put away all of my gardening tools. [Music] [Music] [Music] The last thing I need to do is move these little stepping stones out of the way because we’re not going to need them here anymore. [Music] Putting down weedcloth is something that is extremely simple and easy to do. You just get some U-shaped staples to hammer down in the ground and hammer down your weed cloth into the ground so that it doesn’t move at all when you put over either gravel or in our case mulch. That way it stays in place and prevents weeds from coming through. You just hammer them down real easy like this. We grabbed a pack of 75 in our shopping trip to Lowe’s, but we only used about half of it, I think. And the weed cloth we already had from a previous project, so I did not count that in my budget. But you also don’t have to put this down. It’s just helpful to prevent weeds, so you don’t have to put as thick of a layer of mulch. [Music] [Music] If you are enjoying this garden content or if you love mom content with cooking and cleaning and organizing, then please consider hitting that subscribe button down below. And don’t forget to hit that notification bell. All of my videos go live as premieres, which means that I get to be there and chat with you while you’re watching it as it comes out live. I love getting to know my viewers, and I can’t wait to see you in the next live premiere. [Music] [Music] [Music] For the areas that aren’t perfect lines, you just fold it back and cut along the shape of whatever your edge is. [Music] [Music] [Music] Oh, look. We had another little visitor. For the next step, we laid out the seven stepping stones in the way that we thought they would look best. I wanted to center it onto our shed. I thought that would look best for this space and be the most useful. And then Maddie and I mixed up some concrete. This is one bag of concrete in our wheelbarrow. And we mixed it to where it was still pretty solid. I didn’t want it to be too liquid and soupy because we want to use it underneath each of these stepping stones to help level them out. So, we wanted it to be kind of the texture of sand in a way, a little bit wetter than sand, of course, like mud, I guess. And that way, we could raise up these pieces of concrete and uh treat it as if it was kind of like tile, and level it out really simple and easy and quick this way. This is obviously not the perfect way to level things out, but for a garden walking path and for a DIY friendly project, this is totally something that you can do. And it was really easy. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] For the first stepping stone, it was really off level, so we had to add one full bag of concrete to help level it out. But for the rest of these stepping stones, it took only half a bag of concrete for each stone. So, we ended up using only four bags of concrete for all seven steps. [Music] [Music] [Music] We had a little bit of concrete left over and then I had these small 12x 12 pavers. So I came up with this idea to reuse them in this spot and also reuse a concrete bench that we had in the yard in this spot as well. So, this did not cost us extra, but if you were to do this, it would cost you $81 to get the concrete bench. While the concrete is setting, we’re going to start laying down all of the mulch. Make sure that while you’re laying the mulch, you are getting it up under any gaps under these stepping stones to help support the weight of them. Since that concrete does not cover every square inch underneath there, you want to shove up as much as you can of this mulch underneath your stones to help keep it extra supported. I’m just using black mulch. You can use any mulch you want to. And this project would actually have been even cheaper if I had done this during a time where the hardware stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot were having their um I think it’s5 for $10 bags of mulch. We ended up paying twice as much. They were $4 a bag for the mulch. So, this would have been even cheaper if you wait and just do it when they have mulch on sale. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] to create a border to hold the mulch in and to kind of differenti iate that part of the yard from our grass part of the yard. We used these landscaping timbers. I think they were a little over $4 a piece. I’m not sure, but they were super affordable. Sometimes you have to ask them to get you one from the back because they don’t show them out on the sales floor for some reason. That’s that’s very strange, but that’s what we encountered. They didn’t have them out anywhere. You had to ask them to go get them from the back. But don’t be afraid to ask because they’re happy to do it for you. So, Manny is cutting down the second landscaping timber to fit in that other gap there. And he cut it to fit nice and snug against the rocks so that this was not going to go anywhere. These timbers are pretty heavy because they’re pressuret treated. And so, they are not going to move and get out of place at all. And you don’t have to put in hardly any effort to create a really beautiful border. Now, let’s repot that rose bush that was barely hanging on by a thread over there that I had dug out in the beginning of the video. I don’t know if it’s going to survive this transplant in the middle of the summer, but it’s worth a try. I already had some potting soil on hand, so I’ll have to keep you updated on how this does when I move it to a sunnier area in the yard. [Music] But this is the end of day one of working. We spent about three and a half hours working to get all of this done. That’s all it took to do this work. Three and a half hours. And we stayed focused. We didn’t give up. And we got so much done. But this is what’s left for us to do tomorrow morning, which is really not that much. It’s just a matter of kind of cleaning up and doing the finishing touches here. And I really needed a shower. On day two, we started out strong again with just cleaning up this area. We only spent an hour and a half finishing up all the work for this entire project. Now, so that brings us to a grand total of only 5 hours of work that you could have done in one day or split it two days in one weekend. [Music] [Music] This bag of mulch has been sitting here for probably over a year and the bag is starting to disintegrate. So, I’m just going to rip it open and use that mulch right here in this spot. It could use some more mulch anyway. [Music] And today we got another visitor. This is a really unique dragonfly. I’ve seen quite a few of these in my backyard lately, and it’s totally given me How to Train Your Dragon vibes. Doesn’t it look like a dragon from that movie? So cool. The type of wings it has. Looks like ship sails or something like that. And speaking of something cool, I got this from the Goodwill bins a long time ago. It’s one of those things that blows in the wind and makes a cool design, but it needs to be repainted. So, I will definitely be doing that in a future DIY video over on my channel, Desert DIY. But, let’s get this concrete bench put in place here next to those two small stepping stones that I had put in place earlier. [Music] [Music] Technically, we could totally stop this project right here and it would look amazing. It looks so clean, extremely easy to maintain now. We just have to remulch it as needed over the years. And there won’t be any weeds growing in hopefully, at least not for a long time. But I really wanted to add something behind the bench there in that blank area on either side of that crepe myrtle with all these beautiful luscious plants that we have. I thought that we could just move some of these concrete statues from my rose garden bed into those areas. These statues came with our house when we bought the house. The previous owners left them and I think they’re adorable. Some people have told me they think they’re creepy. If you think they’re creepy, let me know in the comments because I was like, they’re not creepy at all. Who would think they’re creepy, but maybe I’m the weird one that doesn’t think they’re creepy. So, let me know what you think in the comments below about these statues. I thought they looked really cute. I thought it looked like a really like antique garden look, and it was just finishing off these empty spaces without me having to spend any extra money. And before we show the after, let’s just take a look back at what we started with. [Music] [Music] Now, this forgotten space has turned into a shaded oasis, and we did it for only $168 and 5 hours of work. I can’t believe we didn’t do this sooner. [Music] Thank you, my friends, for coming along with us today as we revamp this space. I can’t wait to hear what you think of it in the comments. I think it looks great, but obviously I’m biased. I’m shocked that we hadn’t done this a long time ago considering how easy it was to get done. So, I hope this inspires you to get home and transform a space that you have been putting off for a long time because you can find a way to do it within your budget and do it in a very short period of time if you are just creative. Thank you so much for watching. If you like what you saw today, don’t forget to hit subscribe to see more. I’ll see you next time. Bye.