Four years before we moved from our Mississauga family home of 33 years, we engaged in a large landscaping project, mostly in our back yard. We backed onto a green belt trail system, the neighbours were not within “reach out and touch” distance, we had a large deck with a very nice gazebo (with Coolaroo blinds on each side), and an outdoor fireplace in a pit surrounded by gardens. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? We also had five very tall maple trees, with very wide canopies. They were beautiful but we were forever cleaning up after them (plus so much raking in the fall) and they were grass killers.

One of the ideas we followed through on was to add a concrete patio down the side of our garage and a path around our deck with steps leading down to the pit area. We were apprehensive, thinking all that concrete (that would tidy up a section of our side and back yard) would also be ugly. Surprisingly, we loved it, and we enjoyed that upgrade for four years before moving and leaving that awesome back yard behind.

We no longer back onto a green belt but we were fortunate to find a home with a very large and private yard in an older, well established neighbourhood in Paris (ON). It has a good-sized covered deck, and a good-sized attached open deck beside a very nice perennial garden with a water feature. So far, so good. It also has perennial gardens running along three sides of the back property. It does not have a garden shed. In the spring, the grass off the deck was spongy and was starting to get trampled even though we’d only been walking out there for a month following the cold winter weather.

So… we decided to repeat, to some degree, what worked for us before.  To our surprise and delight, one of our new neighbours was just starting his own construction business and he was able to change our concrete ideas (see what I did there?) into reality.  Thank you, Phil.

The walkway beside the garage, from the driveway to the side yard, was pieces of flagstone with grass growing between them. They angled sideways, making it a bit wonky to walk on. We replaced that with a 4’ wide concrete path.

There was a perfect spot on the other side of the deck wall for a shed. We replaced that grass with a concrete slab and built a garden shed on it. Although the concrete was finished in May, it took what seemed like forever to finish the shed (and there’s still some work to be done – next spring). Many thanks to our son-in-law, Stephan, for the actual shed construction, which he did quickly. But, between the suffocating heat and frequent and heavy rain, it took another four months for Steve and I to paint it, get the doors on, get the windows installed, and finish most of the inside. (Then we took a two week vacation.)

And the build begins…

To extend our outdoor living space, we replaced the trodden grass off the deck with a very nice concrete patio.

To join this new patio to the side yard beside the shed, we ran a 4’ wide concrete path around the deck garden.

That sounds like a lot of concrete but our back yard is huge and there’s still lots of grass between the patio and the back garden with its huge, towering evergreen trees. It takes about an hour to cut all the grass so we have not turned our beautiful new back yard into a concrete jungle. 

And… while watching all this hardscaping evolve, and the building of the shed, we took on the updating of the covered porch.  When we moved into our home in early December, the porch had a roof but the sides were open.  As a very temporary measure, we “enclosed” the sides with heavy duty vinyl that protected all the stuff we put out there until we found a better place for those items.  Step by step, we tidied up those contents, removed the ugly vinyl, set up some comfy furniture, and installed the same Coolaroo blinds we had in Mississauga.   

To inaugurate our updated back yard, in late August we invited our music friends to an outdoor jam where we entertained other friends and several of our new neighbours, not to mention ourselves. Despite the shed not being 100% finished, the yard no longer looked like a construction zone. With the help of two pop up tents, our decks and new patio made the perfect “stage” and the yard a comfy place for our audience. Thankfully, the weather gods cooperated.

All this to say that we brought a little bit of Mississauga to Paris and we couldn’t be happier with the results. Oh, and not one maple tree in sight.