How one family turned an overgrown backyard into a dream family space

Key project details

Home owners: James and Lauren Spiteri

Location: Doreen, Vic

The project: Small backyard makeover

The budget: $26,000

James’ top tip for renovators: “Making mistakes is part of renovating. If I make a mistake on anything, I rip it down and tweak it until I get it right.”

Owning your own home and having a backyard for the kids to play in is the great Australian dream – and something James and Lauren Spiteri were tantalisingly close to when they moved into their Melbourne home in 2015. The house was just four years old but it already showed signs of wear and tear, and the backyard was out of control.

“It was literally just yuccas and thick bush. It was a big thick jungle,” James says. “There were no open spaces and no play area for the kids.” It was obvious to James he needed a backyard makeover. “I had a vision – I wanted the kids to run around and play there.”

Planning for success

James, an account manager for Bunnings Trade, rates his D.I.Y. skills as ‘pretty good’. “We had a house before this that I renovated,” he says. “That’s where I learned how to make mistakes.” This time around, James took his time doing a detailed project plan and coming up with backyard ideas. “My wife would look through the window and it would be raining and I’d just be standing out there trying to work it out,” James said. “Then I'd come in and research it and type it up.”

The first thing James did was clear the area. “I did pretty much everything by hand. I started clearing it out and cutting trees back,” he says. Before doing any digging though, James called Dial-Before-You-Dig, a service that gives you information on underground cables and pipes. “I found that I had an easement at the back of my house that I never knew,” says James. He tweaked the backyard design to allow for the easement.

Once all the prep work was done, James got to work. He added a lawn, extended the deck, built retaining walls, painted the fencing, and installed an in-built bench seat using steel, concrete and timber. He also built planter boxes, laid the paving and erected a pergola. “I did the whole process on my own,” he says. “It took me about two years, but I was working full-time and just doing bits and pieces after work and on the weekends.”

Short-term frustration, long-term reward

The most challenging part of the job for James? The crazy paving. “I’d done a small amount of paving in my old place but this is a huge area. It’s probably about 50 square metres,” he says. “With crazy paving, each paver has a different thickness so working that out was a bit tricky.” (Watch How to lay crazy pavers to see how it’s done.)

While he’s happy with the result, James wouldn’t hurry to do the pavers again. “They came out perfect. I couldn’t have asked for better but I still remember doing it in summer,” he says. “I’d come home from work and do at least one barrow’s worth of paving. It was just torturous in the heat on your knees but I was motivated by the satisfaction afterwards.”

Fixing mistakes

Even though James, who can be found on the Bunnings workshop community as Jimi, was confident going into this project, he does admit to making some mistakes. The most costly in terms of time, money and sweat, was the retaining wall. “I didn’t dig deep enough on some of the posts and by the time I was working on the other side of the house I noticed it was starting to bow,” James says.

Staying true to his mantra of fixing mistakes and moving on, James went back and re-did the first posts. “Things like that are almost common sense if you've done it before,” James says. “When you first start everything is a huge learning curve.”

Now that his vision has become a reality, James loves nothing more than watching his kids in the backyard and spending his evenings outside. “I love watering the garden,” he says. “It's very fulfilling.”

More from Jimi and Workshop

To see more of Jimi’s projects, visit the Bunnings Workshop community. You’ll find projects including a beautiful climbing planter project as well as his backyard makeover.