Backyard revamp

Livermore homeowners and parents create a backyard the whole family can enjoy year-round with a heated plunge pool, salvaged fire pit, and play area.

Every house has potential if you design it with intention. Sharing the process of designing, renovating, and decorating our 1960's home, and providing inspiration for you to do the same.

UPDATE: Don’t miss Part 2 of this makeover, a One Year later update and Two Years later update! Today is the culmination of months of labor intensive, physically and mentally exhausting work (but as always… worth the effort!) We started this project back in February, when the yard looked like this: Knocking down the concrete […]

Two years ago I revealed what would become the first phase of our Riverside Retreat Backyard DIY makeover: A year later, we completed Phase 2 (and hopefully the last major revision!) just before the house became available for rent: Over the past year, we’ve had successes and failures, and a few big lessons learned as […]

I’m excited to show you this quick and relatively inexpensive project for creating a sun shade patio area. We created our own planter post to act as an anchor point for the sail and it worked beautifully. We’ve officially been in out new house for a year now and have been excited to work on some ou

While many old homes require some (or a lot) of repairs and updates to make them comfortable, some old house owners get lucky with places that were maintained with care over the years.That was fortunately the case for Kristy Hootman and her family, whose 1961 home was in great shape when they moved in. “We made a handful of updates like painting the walls, but overall, the interior space was liveable,” Kristy says.

Never fear, your vegetables can still thrive.

Tiles plus pavers plus gravel was the recipe that turned this L.A. backyard into a dreamy oasis.