She Shed: Part 1 of the Backyard Makeover

Well it’s finally happening! Today we get to share with you the beginning of a project we have had in our minds for almost eight years. After many starts and stops, failed attempts and half finished projects, I am getting a She Shed and Doug is finally get to landscape the backyard.

But before we unveil our plans I feel like there should be a backstory so you can get a baseline for what it took to get here.

It’s been almost 8 years since we moved into our house, and from the start there has been one feature that we have struggled with, the backyard. When we moved in what we had for a backyard was… gravel. Yes you read that right. The entire backyard was covered with pea gravel, and any area that didn’t have gravel was brick. That definitely makes for a hot backyard so our first thought was, let’s put a pool out there. Well that worked for about a year and a half but it just didn’t fit our life at that time.

So that was our first fail.

Next we knew we wanted a garden so we decided to do a raised garden bed since we would be able to do this without needing to remove any gravel, it turned out ok but just wasn’t large enough for everything we wanted so we added a larger garden area. That one took a little work, I know we took out several yards of gravel for that project.

So we had a couple of garden areas, a small brick patio that needed to be replaced and still a whole lot of gravel. Not really the atmosphere we were looking for.

At the same time we decided to re-do the landscape in the front of the house, the lawn was in bad shape so it was a good excuse to lay some sod. Well I ended up with several rolls left over from that project and not wanting to let anything go to waste we quickly laid it in an area of the backyard.

So that’s the half finished project.

So where do we go from here…

First, let me explain a bit – exactly what is a She Shed?

Well – essentially it’s a type of structure that you build outdoors – it’s really anything you want it to be. Typically it’s a shed that is filled with comfortable furniture to fit your style. Sometimes it’s used for entertaining, sometimes for work, but mostly though – it’s a little relaxing get-away.

Because we work from our home, we live right in the middle of work all the time. While it’s a great thing, don’t get me wrong we absolutely love our work, it can be a bit much.

So this She Shed space will be a little stay-cation get away for me, a space to enjoy family time and perhaps entertain as well.

Over the course of the next 6 weeks we’ll be building a She Shed complete with GAF Roofing Products. GAF has earned the Women’s Choice Award consecutively since 2012 because they’re highly recommended by 9 out of 10 contractors and their female customers.  When choosing what roofing products to use, they were a no-brainer for this project

But before we can start on that we have a lot of work to do. In the next couple weeks we’ll be doing site preparation, bringing in 20-30 cubic yards of topsoil and getting all of the flower beds ready for planting. And yes, we have more sod to lay.

We’ll keep you updated with occasional posts here and across all of our social media. We will also be sharing the process on Facebook live chats so you can get in on all the action.

Keep up to date —

• She Shed Part 2
• She She Part 3

And to top it all off we are going to let you – the reader – choose the style of GAF shingles we will be roofing the She Shed with. And be entered for a chance to win a gift card!

Head on over and cast your vote for your favorite color of shingle!

I can’t wait to get started and share the entire project with everyone. So stay tuned!

We’d love to hear from you so leave a comment below and let us know what is the favorite feature or item in your backyard? We might just want to add that to the project!