This original 1940’s Art Deco has a backyard for a front yard and was quite the eye sore before (see below) with it’s overgrown driveway and lack of patio for the suite area below.
It all started when I rented a jackhammer….
The slanted, narrow 1940s driveway was already blocked off by the front yard’s fence, and getting down to the suite was a shuffle, dangerous and annoying. Goodbye driveway!
It was all fun and games removing the piles of rock, clay and soil until I hit Vancouver Island granite. Now I know why there was never a patio down there before! Behold the rock that I had broken up by an excavator…
We dug this front yard up and installed new perimeter drains, built a new split’nstack with poured concrete patio for the suite. It took forever and cost a small fortune. Here’s the jackhammer that started it all (shown here below removing the backyard patio, couldn’t help myself…)
As a Realtor I sure don’t mess around with Perimeter drains - they are the most system of a home like this with a finished basement.
Fast forward to today and I’ve never been happier with this front yard! A fresh coat of paint makes the back of this Art Deco look spectacular. I also updated the exterior accent colour from the classic Red to a bright Turquoise and I’m so happy with the results! Curb appeal is a real thing, and it doesn’t matter how renovated my interior was, coming home to the outdated exterior was a downer.
Our new patio! I called in an arborist to cut the neighbour’s tree and they cut “fence to sky” allowing for even more light to come into the patio area. It may have taken me a decade to do it but I believe the Art Deco finally got the (front/back) yard it deserved :)