The Glorious DIY Backyard Patio Project.

Before and After
Originally uploaded by Vincent Ma.

So the last while I've been toiling on my backyard patio project.

After the successes of our front yard project last year, the boss ordered a repeat! We went through countless revisions of the layout and finally arrived at a designed that we can both live with.

In place of shoddy lawn, we now have a new interlock patio that is about 300 sq-ft in size!

As usual, the entire project was photo-blogged on Flickr. Enjoy.

Manual aeration of the lawn

Manual aeration of the lawn
Originally uploaded by Vincent Ma.

We've had the lawn for, what, almost 4 years now. It is due for an aeration.

Aerating the lawn involves removing plugs of soil (4" deep or so, size bigger than a dime) from various places of the lawn to promote air and water to go to the roots of the remaining grassroots.

Usually lawn-care companies drive by / call / spam about services. They can probably aerate your lawn in no time, but they charge tens, if not hundreds of dollars and use a power aerator.

Instead, Mr. Self-Torture decides to use a manual coring aerator to do the job. Every foot or so, I push the tool into the soil and every push I remove 2 plugs. Repeat ad nauseum, until entire lawn is covered.

Took me an hour to cover all 4 pieces of my lawn in the front, and another half-hour to pick up all the plugs. (normally the plugs would dissolve after heavy rainfall, but they interfere with my reel mower, so I remove them.)