The townhouse entrance and garden renovation.
When we bought the townhouse there were raised garden beds alongside the carport which looked nice enough. The soil in the planters was very root bound and nothing would grow. There was also a fairly large non-indigenous deciduous tree outside the kitchen window that we wanted to remove. Its leaves blocked the gutters and just made a mess.
Claremont townhouse carport before & after
The entrance before & after
Quick fix for Townhouse front garden
We tried improving the soil and planting new annuals as a quick fix to try and make it look pretty while we decided what to do with the space long term. The plants barely survived a few months so there was little chance anything would flourish there long term.
Time for a new plan
There was not much storage in the unit, so we decided to remove the planter boxes and soil, pave the area and install a small garden shed in its place. We applied to the council of owners to make the changes, got permission and we were good to go. We thought we would do the whole thing over a long weekend and one skip bin! Not quite.
We calculated how many cubes of soil there were in the planter boxes and ordered a skip that would take slightly more. But – the volume of soil was much greater once it had been loosened and one skip was not enough! Roots from a tree in the next-door neighbour’s unit had invaded the boxes and those took an awfully long time to remove. In short – IT WAS A BIG JOB!
The digging starts
The Child pops over to help & doesn’t miss a photo op!
Bust gas main & time for a cuppa!
The not so Skilled one of us hit a gas main with a misplaced swing of the pick! We had to call Atco to come and seal it – then later in the week the whole pipe had to be re-laid – thankfully at no cost to us.
The Renovation Starts …
We bought pavers that were as close to the existing ones so that council of owners would hopefully approve the upgrade.
There was a bit of a gap under the colourbond fence between us and the neighbours so we used posts and sleepers from Bunnings to create a small retaining wall to keep the soil in place.
We spent a lot of time Googling various YouTube instruction videos on how to prepare the ground for the pavers. The road base and sand came from Western Suburbs Building & Landscape Supplies. A compactor hired from Bunnings helped ensure the base was really firm. We had to use an angle grinder to cut the pavers where needed and used Wesbuild pave and lock was used to fill in the gaps.
Design Changes we made & why
We thought the kitchen window was a bit exposed from the driveway and wanted to create a screen, just not a solid one, so it was back to Bunnings where we bought a Matrix screen. We fixed two wooden planks between the carport pillars, painted them black and screwed the screen to the planks. Screen job done for under $200.00!
Hope you found the townhouse entrance and garden renovation interesting. If you would like to have a look at our other renovations you can see them here.