Contemporary Front Yard Makeover | Gardening | Great Home Ideas

when it comes to your home we all know about street appeal I can make a big difference to how you feel about the place and how much your house is worth and at the moment this 1980 primary school fence is letting this beautiful old gem of a house down so out with the old and Aggie and in with the new and shiny and it's not just the fence when talking about this garden I mean this space needs a lift as well pebbles great if you're trying to create that dry riverbed look or a long driveway but to the front of house is an absolute no-no so you got to clear all this out and put in a garden as well so check them out so we're putting a picket fence in there's two panels four panels six panels with the neighbor and tears are about $50 a lineal meter now if you think that's a lot of money compared it to brickwork if you try to do a fence like some of the other ones in the street would cost about $1000 a linear meter so this picket fence is going to look as good but it's a twentieth of the price now the easiest way to set up the fence is have a top and a bottom string line and you can set your heart right means you go along do all the posts and you only have to check them to be level this way rather than checking them all so the next thing to do is set your post now I normally layout for a bag of quick-set concrete at each post there's about a dozen here so that's 240 kilos of concrete I've got to carry in the back of the you or for the average homeowner in the back of their car and that's not nice or that are a brand new product now this is from seeker it's like expanding foam but it can go into the ground perfect fence post letterbox clotheslines things like that all you gonna do is gonna roll this up you break the seen through the middle and then you've got 20 seconds where you rub it over your legs to mix it all through you ready yep let's go oh I can feel it expanding now what did I do the scissors I gotta say you've got to see this to believe it within three minutes we'll fill the hole and within two hours you can work with it just really leave the easiest picket fence to put up because the posts and the rails are just screwed together there's no mortising or checking out with a chisel and it just sits in front of it but with that you end up with this ugly joint down the side if I put on the first picket from the side where all the gates are you can see in here so what I'm gonna do is put one on the side now I'm using a pretty contemporary picket it's 42 ml by 19 it'll give us a new modern look and when I bang the first two on like that I've completely hidden that little cheat that I did now as far as the space goes between your pickets it's up to you what I like to do but I pick it on its edge pick up the next one and I can guarantee that all my joints in nineteen milk it's really important that you get your picket close to the string lovers don't touch it you have a look at the next door neighbor's fence the pickets are got an arch in it because as they've been putting them up they've probably just touched that string ever so slightly and as they get to the center of the fence it's a lot higher than either end of it post the h4 so they're not primed but they are treated to go in the ground the rails and the pickets will they're covered in pink paint which means they're primed ready to go for fire code for speed I'd bang on about three or four up top before I pick up the level and then space out the rest I'm putting a letterbox in here so this pig in here is the last one that fits up but to it and here if I kept going with my same spacer I'd end up with two that we're touching each other even overlapping so to eliminate that and not do a ton of maths you stop about eight pickets from the end that's a good amount where you can blend in the gap if you're driving past a walking pass you'd never notice it the only person that really would the person who puts it up and you now that I've told you looks great looks finished but it's a lot easier to paint the picket by spraying it and that means taking this out to do it okay she's looking good a coat of paint or finish the job off and spraying is a lot faster and easier and of course every fence deserves a gate yeah you're welcome even though this is a short path to the front door it will be the main traffic area so don't skimp on the road base because you don't want your pavers to move in the future then lay 30 mils of wash River sand and remember do it right do it once if you've ever seen kids learn how to temper involved they fill the gutters in with bumper rails and these guys here are pretty much the same thing they're called screed rails and what you do is you just screed over the top of them and it means you can't dig into the sand and make mistakes the pavers are 400 by 400 and this contemporary gray called Zurich will definitely give a stylish entrance to the house of course you've got a horn chin if you don't you miles will just throw the pavers down because they're gonna move on you anyway this locks it in gets it nice and straight keeps it nice and straight and you can hide that side with turf and this side with a pebble or some mulch now I'm keeping the garden design pretty simple I'm gonna have a garden bed behind the fence and one in front of the brickwork lawn in the middle but I've come up with an executive decision this little groove Illya it's seen better days and I'm gonna take it out but check with your council first before taking out any tree at your place no I don't take trees out lightly but it's coming to the end of its life they usually only live about 20 25 years in dank place soil so I promise you by the time we finish the garden you won't even miss it and the reason why I cut those branches up nice and high wasn't cuz I was too lazy to get in here do it's like an ever better leverage she's mate now traditionally I'd have a little heads behind this picket fence but because I've got the water there this tree and the gas over there I can't even Li space out the plants I've got these viburnum Thainess now compared to Otis room we've got a smaller leaf but more flowers so they're a bit more showy and then on the ground here is a pittosporum hole in once they'll get big enough to hide the water meter but they'll stay short enough that they won't block the letterbox and some lime andhra lime tests which are there no maintenance at all so it's an informal garden but that's okay cuz you see it when you come in out of the house when you're going into the house the house is quite formal you're gonna have a heads you go Denny's a little diamond frost you for beer across the front and in here you better sir water buffalo cuz it's kind of handle the shade of all these trees and it's a good idea to play it before your turf it's kind of like you can clean up and sweep all the dirt underneath in your cap now I like to lay a roll of turf all the way around the outside first for a couple of reasons it means you're not over here with the shovel trying to cut the grass and chipping your pavers but it also means if you end up with little bits there 500 million from the edges and these spots here hard up against hard surfaces are gonna dry out quicker a little bits in here you got to be protected one of the advantages of working in a small little front yard like this is the economy of scale keeping things small means that it costs you less and it's quicker to go up a 900 mil picket fence is cheaper than a 1200 mil picket fence an 800 mil path which looks fine in such a small space is obviously cheaper than a wider 120 metres of turf not hundreds a few plants and this front yard is now the prettiest garden in the street it's come off from the worst to the best in just one day and at the same time improve the street appeal and instantly increase the value of the property but better still it's given this classic house the garden it deserves

Channel: Great Home Ideas

Views: 1,554,649

Rating: 4.8477769 out of 5

Keywords: home and living, cooking, recipes, dr harry, Better Homes and Gardens, yard, Australia, living, how2, Channel 7, tips, making, outdoors, pets, fast ed, Home Makeover, howto, advice, food, DIY Hacks, how to, GHI, Homes, better homes & gardens, pet care, Gardens, network7, front, Better Homes, DIY, Great Home Ideas, craft, Gardening, DIY Gardening

Id: uqnLJMCwGKo

Length: 8min 22sec (502 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 04 2015