Designing a backyard

-> A very simple hand drawn picture of the current backyard design.
(trampoline at the top, pond right underneath, left is the shed and the top right corner has Wim's vegetable garden, between the veggie garden and BBQ we'll put a playset for the kids, in the middle we have the lawn)

We have been working on our backyard design for months now.
Our basic requirements are:
- area for the trampoline
- area for playground
- area for Wim's vegetable garden
- shed to store bikes and garden tools
- area for the BBQ

We "hired" someone to draw a design which incorporates all of the above, but to our disappointment he didn't make many changes to our own ideas. We changed his plan and went back to have him draw it up again.

As a result, we got a very detailed design:
- price for each and every single work/job
- list of plants
The price tag is of course over our budget.

Wim started his investigation of prices (on the internet) and if we coordinate everything ourselves (and even do a bunch of things ourselves) we can cut the cost in half. Of course it will probably take more then twice as long, but I already gave up on a lawn by summer anyway (which Wim claims will be there before summer - let's vote).

Another obstacle is that we keep making changes. A bigger pond, the orientation of the path, the kind of stones we will use, now we just decided to add to our existing patio,... it seems like it will never end.

This Thursday however, someone is going to come and scrape off the top 7 inches of dirt in the backyard. We need to know pretty good by then where the trampoline and pond is going to be, because that machine will dug the holes for those as well.

So.... we spent all evening measuring pathways....

Almost there.... for phase 1 that is.