Ideabook 911: Our First Yard

Between Naps on the Porch says:

Wow....this is wonderful, Becky! Such awesome ideas...love the drawings! Please come design my yard!

ofri says:

Thank you Becky, this is great!

The drawings and photos give us awesome ideas. I especially love the chalkboard & climbing walls (both my husband and I are into rock climbing). We will sit down later tonight & start planning how to move forward...

Lindsay Daniel says:

Not sure you should demolish the pool, especially if its expensive and you're on a budget. Plus, when the kids get older I bet they would love to swim. What about filling it with dirt and planting grass in the pool area for now, so that later, if you want, you could remove the grass and dirt and refinish the pool. Sounds like a cheaper option at least for now.

Rama says:

We also had a lovely pool but have decided to close it and make it into a paved garden with a gazebo. We had fun with it for nearly 6 ears but later on we had problems of leakage and so on. We are still looking for some ideas that would suit our budget and our life style.

Patti Lever says:

Please don't demolish the pool. My parents purchased a home with a massive pool exactly like this one. I was 14 and my brother was born the year after we moved into the house. The best childhood memories we have are of that pool. Birthday parties, Christmas (it was summer in Australia), I could go on and on. I would give anything to have a pool again. I'm 42 now and still remember the long summer days laying by the pool, reading a book and then jumping in to play with my baby brother.

It wasn't a lot of work either because it was a salt water pool that required minimal upkeep. My dad had it converted to salt water and it wasn't a huge expense to convert.

The fun that your children will have in that pool will be amazing. Please rethink getting rid of the pool.

donnaegypt says:

I agree with the arguments for not demolishing the pool. My son loved it growing up. But I also remember when I lived in AZ that there was a company that "parked" your pool. They decked over it or something. It was reversible for the future.

Rama says:

Yes even I am for the pool, they should not demolish it just to make some other meaningless thing.
We are forced to do it because as it is leaking from not one but two or three places and it would take lot of money and also water to find out where exactly the leaks are. In a country where water is scarce, it is crime to think of having a swimming pool with leakage problems. It is not a big expense to maintain the pool, for we were doing it by ourselves. Because we had lots of space and having a swimming pool also was very soothing for the eyes, for the weather in the place where we live it is not always possible to to jump into the pool, for it is always quite cool and breezy, we have only 3 months of proper summer. But still we had lots of fun time in our pool. We have had pool party for our daughter's wedding. Now both son and daughter have moved away, and it is only just us. Though i feel terribly bad to have something else in that place.
It just takes about 20 mins. of cleaning everyday and some chemicals to clean the whole pool once a month and to totally empty the pool and clean it completely once in 3 years.
And I am sure you have access to more sophisticated equipments to clean and maintain the pool, than we have in India.
I would say stay with the pool if there is nothing to repair in it.

engineerchic says:

I'm going to go against the grain and applaud you for removing the pool. From the pictures, it consumes your ENTIRE yard. Your kids are 7-10 years from being old enough to be trusted with a pool. I think a real yard will be so much more enjoyable. If you want, you can always keep a space open for a reasonably sized above ground pool in the future. I'm biased as we removed an inground pool from the second house we bought & loved the change it made in our yard & the time we had to enjoy it. Pools do take a lot of time to keep clean. We had tried to enjoy that pool for a year before having it torn out & I have to say, I spent more time vacuuming the pool than I did my whole house!

I love the idea of going with the locavore movement, your 4 yr old is at a great age to enjoy watching things grow and stroking different herbs to see what they smell like. The raised beds shown are really attractive, too. Another option is some EarthBoxes (not affiliated, just a happy owner of 9). They take a lot of the work out of growing veggies in a small space. But you'll want to screen the boxes themselves ... they're plastic & not really stylish at all. I'm attaching a photo of one way to make simple, modern looking boxes that hide the EBs. It's not so much for inspiration in terms of "Oooh, I want my yard to look like that!" but more as a possible element in an attractive space (this is a rooftop garden that looks pretty bleak, in all honesty).

Another thought is adding some shade, on the Brick House blog they added a shadesail to their yard (actually 2) and it looks great with a modern style home. But I do see some trees beyond the fence, they may cast enough shade for you already.

Final thought - I saw a backyard makeover on HGTV where they kept a concrete track around the perimeter of the yard because it was GREAT for riding bigwheels & tricycles. I know, it isn't a longterm goal to have bigwheel riding space, but you could always have a plan to cover that area with potted plants in the future & some pots are just drop-dead gorgeous. And cheap, the second pic is from Design Sponge where they repurposed an old, cheap file cabinet from Goodwill into a really cool planter box.

Becky Harris says:

Hey Guys, the pool is done-zo. Not up for debate, so they could really use advice that does NOT relate to the pool. Thanks!

wendysue says:

Thanks engineerchic for posting that Design Sponge planter. That post was my first thought when I saw becky's plan. Bold, modern and cheap!

tcufrog says:

I have a 4 yr old and some of the things you will get a lot of use of are a play house, a slide (you can get some that don't take a lot space and even fold away) and a swing or two. Also, I highly recommend some green lawn for running and games, a sand box ( friend of mine sunk hers into their wood deck and another put theirs on wheels so she could put it away when not in use) or sand and water table, a small kids picnic table (you can get one for very little at Ikea. Ours is very popular.) and a small vegetable garden. An inexpensive way to add shade to the kids' play area is to put in some poles for attaching a sail cloth over the play area when necessary. Finally, storage for kids' outdoor play gear is important. If you go for a deck you can sink the storage compartments into the deck.

For family time a round table and a grill will get used a lot.

Rima kabbani says:

very nice, i like it very much

ofri says:

Thanks for the great & detailed tips engineerchic & tcufrog. I'm going to start meeting with landscapers and see how we can implement these great ideas!

Rebekah Zaveloff says:

LOVE those grids! So many great ideas - thanks Becky for a great ideabook and all the designers whose projects are featured.

ofri says:

ok, my husband tried to put our thoughts on paper.
We are sure about the location and size of the kitchen garden and sandbox, and we wanted the lawn to look somewhat symmetric.
Thoughts and comments are welcomed!

James Judy says:

that's looks very perfect for me, expecting to get more photos

Becky Harris says:

Wow! That is looking SO GOOD!

I think if you get more into gardening, you may want another garden box that lines up with the first garden box and sandbox - you may want to save that space if you start to add other elements like the climbing wall, etc.

I am so jealous of the thought of a lemon tree! You are so lucky ;)

ofri says:

oops, the 'we are sure about the size...' was supposed to be 'we are NOT sure about...' :(

Yep, we were thinking about a lemon tree since in our case it would be the most useful fruit tree :)

sharonyb says:

I guess that once we won't need the sandbox (older kids), we can convert that space to climbing wall, or we can put the climbing wall on the corner.

Becky Harris says:

Good point - they'll be moving onward and upward!

hulaross says:

It is to bad they lost the pool but the change was great, clean concept and must have been what they were looking for. It was an overwhelming pool for what appeared to be a small linear yard.