Carpet Outside! Throwback Thursday! More Exclamation Marks!

Last week, in this post, I shared the little patio I created in our garden. And staying with the theme of all carpet, all the time, I thought I'd share about how we came to even have carpet in our yard. But not carpet tile of course. 

Well, just like with the patio project, we've been working to eliminate opportunities in which Henry can't help himself but give into his innate desire to dig. And as you can see, he will take any opportunity to help rotate the soil:

Thus significantly reducing the dig-able surface area in our yard,

 has been a number one priority. 

So about a month ago, I discovered these:                And since our yard was looking like this:

And I had measured it more than a couple of times because we were thinking about getting this:

But it was actually the price that made the fake grass an impossible solution. So when I saw the garden centre sale, I knew that these carpets could be a cheap and cheerful solution to our problem. Two text messages to my husband later, and walking 8 blocks with them under my arms, I was ready to put them down.

I started by checking to see how much space they would fill up and how I might resolve the half a foot on either side. This is also when I discovered that the space under my table was really lumpy. Which meant I had to level it out a bit (and by a bit, I mean I re-leveled the whole carpet section and then used a piece of wood to make sure it was mostly level, yep, perfectionism moment). 

I decided to do a pea gravel edge, because I had it, and it would be a continuation of the already existing edge. And I thought it wouldn't be too hard to push back off the carpet when it did spill over. Like I did for the gravel edge of the patio, I laid down some gardening fabric, and then placed the stones on top. I also decided to add the landscape fabric under the carpets, to prevent dirt and mud from coming up from underneath when it rains. 

And then that was basically that. All in all, it probably took about 3-4 hours between leveling and placing the carpets. Even with this being a Henry prevention/solution project, Patches decided it was worth checking out. I think mostly she thought I was finally building him a house outside of her house, so she came to monitor it's progress. By her expression, you can see her disappoint when she discovered it was just carpet. 

But in the end, it looked like this:

Which is significantly better, and maybe the best $80 we've ever spent in the garden!

Tomorrow it going to be all about using carpet tile and regular carpet to make the biggest and best carpet yet! And then maybe I'll be done with talking about carpet. Until I find something else to carpet, like the kitchen or the bathroom. Come on, we've all been in one and loved it.