About Backyard Builder

The first thing we built was a storage shed. The plan said one weekend. It took three. It also cost forty percent more than estimated, required a second trip to the lumber yard on a Saturday afternoon when we had already put away the tools, and leaned slightly east when it was done — which we decided counted as "intentional rustic character" and left alone.

We're Chris and Dave. We bought a fixer-upper on a half-acre lot in rural North Carolina about five years ago, mostly because we couldn't afford not to. The house needed work. The yard needed more. We quickly realized that calling a contractor for every backyard project was going to cost us more than the original mortgage, which meant figuring it out ourselves or living with it unfinished. So far: the shed (leaning eastward, structurally fine), a chicken coop, a raised deck that survived its first North Carolina summer, a pergola that nearly didn't survive the permit process, and a workshop that is technically still in progress — we just keep moving the finish line.

Backyard Builder is the record of those builds: what we planned, what actually happened, what we'd do differently, and what we're still arguing about. Neither of us had any building experience when this started. I handle the planning; Dave handles the power tools — though those roles blur when something goes wrong, which it does with enough regularity to keep this interesting. Everything here is based on real builds in real North Carolina conditions, with real budgets we had to stick to.

Not contractors. Not architects. Not good at measuring twice. Just two people who learned that good plans and enough stubbornness can build almost anything — and that "almost" does some important work in that sentence. Full background: author page.

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