Shop Nation: The Problem with "Dream" Backyards

This is Rob. He's a psychopath and I mean that in the absolute best way possible. Rob is one of the biggest reasons why we were able to successfully transform my plain backyard into this. An oasis that my wife and I have always dreamt about. The truth is though that if you want to be successful you need a Rob in your corner. Over the last two years we've demolished our backyard, lived in a constant mud pit, and dealt with more delays and scope creep than we could ever imagine. But the goal was always the same. Create a backyard oasis for the family. I went into this very naively to be honest. Thinking that the entire project would take one year, I could handle a lot of it myself, and that our budget would be accurate. I was very, very wrong on all counts. There are just way too many variables to plan for and I learned a ton along the way. I'd like to share the complete journey of this massive project from start to finish because there are just too many nuggets of wisdom I learned along the way not to pass along. But I'll do you one better. At the end of the video I'll sit down with Rob for a lightning round to share common things people get wrong with backyard transformations. So you don't make them too. So kick back, grab your caffeinated beverage of choice, and enjoy. When we bought this house about six years ago my wife and I always dreamt of turning this backyard into a place that we can relax and entertain in. I mean we're surrounded by these massive trees, we've got nature, you can hear the birds chirping. We just thought it was a really great blank slate to build from. We actually did this on a smaller scale to our previous house in Texas by putting in a small pool and building a little oasis for ourselves. So the concept of making a backyard our own wasn't brand new, but the eventual plan for this space was very different. But I actually started down that path a couple of years before without knowing it by building the camphouse shed. And this was the first customization in this back corner of our property of our house. And this project tested my skill set like no other project I had before. And it was actually the first kind of full-time project I did when I went full-time as a YouTuber. So it holds a kind of a special place in my heart. But unbeknownst to me this would plant a seed for something much bigger. A bespoke detached workshop. And I've dreamt of having my own shop space since starting YouTube in 2017. And now with this house we finally had the room for it, but it was going to be really expensive. And a lot of that reason has to do with the slope of the yard and access to where the shop would eventually go. The yard wasn't even remotely flat with around 12 feet of drop across it. But to make matters worse it's also the farthest possible point from the road. Plus if we could get to it it would need a special engineered retained wall foundation to work. So I naturally just kept kicking that can down the road until now. I have to give my wife a ton of credit because it was actually her that pushed me to pull the trigger. Imagine that a wife telling the husband to build a dream shop. So I wasted no time and called out a crew to start to clear some trees to make room. It was tough watching them cut down all of these big beautiful trees that make our backyard so special, but there was a plan. Kind of. One of my favorite quotes about planning is that planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it. Which we're doing because we already started talking with some designers. We've been going back and forth trying to wedge the biggest possible shop footprint into our backyard that would feasibly fit. What we ended up with was basically a three car garage with a bathroom and since the roof pitch was already so tall which was going to match our house, I had the architect put that extra headroom to use and added about 500 square feet of upstairs space for a grand total of 1500 usable square feet. The design was more or less done. Now I just needed to go find someone to actually build it. The first quote I got back, without any interior finish mind you, was $315,000. Yikes. But after a little bit more searching and some negotiating, we got the price down to what I thought would be reasonable. Still a lot of money, but I could do some mental gymnastics in my head justifying the increase in our home value it would bring and the fact that I would be using it for business purposes like creating content. But what I soon realized was that building the shop would start a long cascading chain of events, a floodgate of scope creep if you will, because what started as a shop build turned into so much more. And there is of course so much more that went into building this amazing shop which I have fully documented in a playlist which you can get by scanning the code on the screen or finding it linked down below in the description when you're done watching this video. I cover just about every step and even break down the final cost at the end so if you're interested in that go check it out. With the main shop work done we can move on to the pool. We actually went back and forth on where exactly to put it in the backyard but ended up putting it close to the shop. And the reason for that was again thanks to planning. I actually called on the help of another designer who was able to create a rendering that we could work from because as you can see there are a lot of things to consider when placing the pool. How would we use the space? Where would people actually hang out? Is there enough room for furniture? What we finally landed on was pretty sweet and kind of exactly matched up with our vision but now we have to see if we can actually do it in real life. Now this pool is probably a little bit different than other pools you've seen. This style of pool construction isn't very common for residential pools in the U.S. that is because it starts by unrolling big spools of fiberglass sheets that will become the walls of the pool and the spa. Weird, I know. These epoxy coated sheets are stiffened with aluminum spars then backed with concrete that gets poured in those red membrane pockets you see there. The result is a very stiff very flat set of walls on which you can finish building the pool from. The company we used is called Buckeye Pools which they of course named after the state symbol of Ohio and definitely not some mid-level football program in Columbus. Anyway once all the plumbing is done it's time to fill the inside with concrete to form the bottom and all that was happening the outside of the shop started coming together to match the style of the house. The one requirement from my wife was that the shop had to look like it belonged so we mirrored the lower stone and cedar siding of the house and then of course finishing off by painting the same color as the house. But here's where some of that scope creep started. You see it had probably been 15 years since our house had been painted so the colors had faded in the sun a bit during that time meaning that our newly built shop wasn't going to match with its fresh paint and since the painters were already here you can see where this is going right. Yeah we ended up painting the entire house too and I wish that was the only example of that. Another one is the garage doors. We clearly had to install a new garage door on the new shop but then it wouldn't match the older doors on our house so of course those got upgraded as well. But don't worry guys you can fix just about anything with more money and a positive attitude. Hello this is our pool and it looks pretty ugly. Anyway with all the big dirt and concrete work done for the pool it was time to tackle the hardscape around it. But of course there is lots to consider specifically around drainage and retaining walls so with the help of my buddy Rob he got all of that sorted. Since our yard had such a drastic slope change we knew that we were eventually going to need to have retaining walls of some kind. We ended up going with these big stacked boulders which I think just look awesome. And the first area we got knocked out was the front corner of the shop. And then once that front corner was done they moved to the back and started forming the back retaining wall starting at the shop and following our property line behind the pool. These big stones are the first glimpse at the kind of finished look that we're going for and I really like the natural edges of the rocks. It's going to be a really cool backdrop to the pool. One of the most exciting things about this stage was that we finally got to cover up half of the mud in our backyard with gravel. With a dog and small kids it was getting a little old to deal with. And we were of course always thinking about drainage like routing this big drain pipe under the patio that ties into the downspouts of the shop. I did not want to run into water issues later and not thinking about this up front can lead to sloppy results at the end. This was something that I really appreciated about Rob and the experience that he brought to the table. And even though our pool water had basically descended to pond scum it was exciting to see the pool coping getting installed. This is a product called Valstone which I'll talk more about but this stuff is incredible and I honestly didn't even know about it until I saw it in a showroom. And we can't forget about the eventual outdoor kitchen either. We formed up this little foundation and called in the most adorable cement truck for the job. I also like how I'm just casually throwing around the term we a lot. Make no mistake I wasn't doing much manual labor for this part of the project but someone had to set up the camera right? I've thoroughly beat the dead horse of talking about planning ahead throughout this series because it really is the difference between a good result and an epic one. Whether it's the foundation for an outdoor kitchen, the condo runs everywhere just in case, or the construction of the hot tub to perfectly fit in the final design. Really taking the time to obsess about thinking ahead all compounds in the end. It will look better, it will work better, and will be easier to modify when the time comes. It was finally time to take delivery of the pavers for around the pool. Like I mentioned before these are called Valstone and made by a company called Atelier Valls in a cave in Kentucky of all places. But these are actually a concrete product made to look like real stone. They are very high-end looking and come in a literal infinite number of varieties. They will actually cast custom pieces to order which I think is pretty sweet. We're going with a staggered 36 inch by 24 inch paver in the color alps white with nv finish if you were curious. With the pavers flying into place it was about time to clean out the pool and prep it for the final epoxy coating before filling it up. There are small moments during a project like this where you start to see the vision come to life and this was definitely one of those moments. I really appreciated how precise and fast this crew was when setting the pavers too. Pretty cool to watch. Another defining moment was when it was time to pour the new driveway section connecting our old driveway to the new shop. This not only physically bridged our home to the new project but also allowed us to actually use the space a lot more easily. And now with a defining line to follow the guys finished laying the pavers between the two areas. With the messy paver cutting mostly done the pool builders came back in and coated the bottom of the pool in epoxy. I'm curious if anyone else out there has seen a pool done like this if so let me know down in the comments. Once the pool was full Rob got to work getting the pavers cleaned and sealed. With any new paver you want to get them sealed as soon as possible because they will get dirty and can stain but man do they look good. All right next order of business as we worked our way out of the backyard was setting the foundation piers for the deck. This wasn't something that was needed right away necessarily but access to this area with any kind of equipment was about to become impossible so because I obsessively plan ahead I tapped on Rob and his buddy Sean to make quick work of them since you know we had the equipment on side anyways. And I got into way more detail in the deck build video that I just put out so you can go check that out after this video if you're curious about all the steps and decisions on why we used what we used. Now it's time for one of the cooler features of this backyard the giant boulder retaining wall. A lot of work and planning got us to this point and this detail is really going to allow us to eventually build that deck up top and create a lower patio about eight feet below that with more of the Val stone pavers. So with a giant excavator armed with a tilt rotator attachment which is super cool to watch by the way the guys started the process of carefully laying out the foundation bed for each course of rocks. Like a 3d jigsaw puzzle Rob and Sean meticulously placed each stone to create the outline of what will eventually be the lower patio first. And you better believe that drainage for both the retaining walls as well as the features above were all thought out and planned for. There will be zero water issues on this build. As they made their way across the yard behind the pool they got the corner where the stone stairs were going to go allowing you to travel between both levels. It's crazy to see this come together because Rob and I talked about this transition area so many times but when the yard is torn up and it's not graded yet it's hard to visualize. And there are so many things to think about like the depth of the new two inch gas line that we put in earlier that runs directly underneath here that we definitely don't want to hit or the slope transition between the property behind us. It's a complex calculation being solved by a giant machine and boulders which is just cool to watch. Then after some final head scratching and measurements they eventually got the steps put in place. All that was left early for the big excavator I mean that was on site was to get all the drainage tied together grade the slope and some challenges for Sean to maybe just go grab a branch that had fallen and was stuck hanging in a tree. Sean can you go can you put it like flip it So I'm out here trying to get rid of this pile of brush that we've cut down at various points during this whole project and you know I'm here at the trusty camphouse shed at the fire pit but it's just taking forever and then my wife Corinne had an amazing idea. Why don't we instead just pile everything up here now that we've got this big clearing in the backyard no trees above and just have a massive redneck bonfire so that's what we're going to do. Who doesn't like a good fire and it's funny as soon as I even considered making a fire it's like the internal fun detector went off in all the neighborhood kids heads who showed up to watch. I'm not sure how much time or work that really saved me in the end but it was cool nonetheless and it's about damn time that I start contributing to this project and that's going to start with the outdoor kitchen. I was really looking forward to having this up and running because cooking outside is just too much fun and yes I have a complete build video from the ground up on how I did this so if you want to go check that out after this one you can scan the code on the screen or check the links in the description. And with that knocked out we could start to get the yard put back together starting with the front corner by the shop. In addition to adding the rock wall and regrading after the shop was done we decided to clean up some brush and put some grass down in this area since the kids tend to play over here. And one of the more exciting transformations was finally getting our grass back by laying sod in the area which has been serving as the service road for well over a year now. I mean really is there anything more satisfying than a time lapse of fresh sod being laid down? Okay back to me actually doing something. Now it's time for the last big project of this backyard the deck. I took out our old beat-up sunroom tore it apart and built a giant 600 square foot deck that finally ties together our house and the pool area. This was a month-long adventure for me which again I have a full build video on if you'd like to go check that out. But man it really makes this area feel like a true hangout spot and this is exactly the vibe that my wife and I set out to create almost two years ago at this point. But it wasn't done so to get this place across the finish line I need to knock out the little details left and the bigger items like refinishing this covered porch area. I tried my best to channel my inner trim carvender and refaced everything with fresh cedar trim to replace what I tore off during the demo of this room. Of course planning for the little improvements I made along the way like running some speaker wire for additional zones out here. Very clever routing of the wire back here don't you think? But 20 bucks says I drill a screw or punch a nail right through that in the future at some point. But for now we're hunky dory. Now for probably the biggest change is the ceiling. This beadboard is kind of outdated and could use a facelift. Sure I could have left it and it would have been just fine but since we've come this far I'm not really interested in fine. I want wow. I want people to walk into this backyard and think damn this is exactly what I want my backyard to look like. But more importantly I want to walk out here maybe with a coffee in the morning look up and feel proud of what we've made. I want to enjoy this with our family for many years to come. Now in its place I really wanted to match the stained look of the covered porch on the shop. That was a product called Synergy that arrives a hundred percent pre-finished that I got from Advantage Lumber online. So I jumped back on the computer and looked up the same ceiling material and placed my order. They were awesome to deal with the first time as a customer so I actually approached them and asked if they wanted to partner on my new porch project to which they said sure. But honestly I should have went with them for the whole deck build because you can pretty much get everything you need in one place which I think is super cool in this day and age. Anyways a couple weeks later my shipment of Synergy wood shows up. I got that unloaded from the delivery truck transferring it to my truck and then got it up the driveway where I staged it for installation. The color I've used for both projects is called Colonial in case you're curious and it's a really cool darker look that I just really like. So once I got some new puck led lights wired up in the ceiling it was time to throw this stuff up there. Now what's great about this product specifically is that it's end matched meaning there is a tongue and groove along each long edge of course but also on the short ends. This means you don't have to have butt joints of two separate boards land on a ceiling truss every time and this makes install way faster it makes it look more random and my favorite part it cuts down on the amount of wasted material that you actually end up with. By the time I was done I only had a small pile of offcuts left over. I had to get a little creative with the angled transition up here ripping a matched angle on these short pieces and even used a sharpie to hide the raw wood edge on the mating pieces. The result was super clean even my daughter was wildly impressed with my handiwork or not. I've got a question for you how much sawdust does your miter saw spray when you use it? That is of course rhetorical because the correct answer for everyone is all of it and I couldn't agree more. That's why I've made it my mission to solve miter saw dust collection for all with these custom designed aftermarket dust chutes including that little skill saw you saw me using earlier. They install in about three minutes and make a huge difference compared to the junk that comes on your saw. What started as an experiment in my garage shop has turned into a full-fledged manufacturing operation with employees and even a giant t-rex skull here in Ohio. We've got solutions for most of the major saw brands with many more to come so if you're tired of cleaning up so much damn sawdust head to our website and see if we can help you. Your support of my small business keeps this whole thing going and I sincerely appreciate it. I went ahead and knocked out the last of the cedar trim to get everything covered up and ready for paint but first I had to tackle some lower trim around the columns. I needed to cover up the ugly lower sections that I've left over so I'm going to be capping them off with some pvc trim to keep the water off of the wood underneath. A couple of days later the painters came got it all prepped and painted to match the house and shop and we intentionally had the painter skip this area originally because we knew that we were going to redo it at some point but man what a difference some paint makes. Now I can get the last of the railing done for the deck. Just like the other side I'm doing some black cable railing from Muzada. This stuff is slick looking and it's cool that anyone can install it. It does take a little time to get all the little parts put together but we can all agree the final result is pretty awesome. Now on to the fun stuff. Remember the extra zone I talked about running that speaker wire for earlier? Well that's what this is for. The outdoor speakers I installed around the pool were made by Sonance which I got from Best Buy and they've been great so far so I thought I'd give these outdoor speakers a try too. These will be for routing the tv sound through on game days or just allowing us to hang out under the porch with some background music without having to blare across the pool. Okay the speakers are in but this tv just isn't gonna cut it. I mean I can hardly see the dang thing. At 55 inches it's clearly just too tiny and look at that wiring nightmare. I think it's time we upgrade. After running some additional power it's time to put the new 75 inch in place. Yes 75 inches because why not. Okay I'm finally now done with this whole deck back porch area for the daytime. The next, well really last thing I need to do to bring this whole place together is tackle lights because at night this turns into a whole different vibe and when you add landscape lighting and cool led strip lighting that goes around the outside of the deck it's going to bring it to another level. So that's what we're going to do and then we'll do the final reveal. I went out and got custom length outdoor leds sized for each segment around the deck. Now I've never set anything up like this before and I'm honestly a little intimidated but we've made it this far right? Back when we ordered the Valstone coping around the hot tub we had them cast in this channel for lights. This is going to add such a cool effect at night once it's done but this was only possible by thinking ahead. Just one small example of it finally paying off. Now these other strips around the actual decking that fits in that channel that we put in during that step I did end up going back and gluing them in. I'm under no illusion that the adhesive back that comes with them is actually going to hold them on over time and once all the strips were in place it was just a matter of connecting all the runs. Now the thing about led strips is they're pretty power hungry and can only be run in maximum lengths of 32 feet in my case. So again when laying out and building the deck I made sure to run wire to each location where a new run started. So as I'm connecting everything up I need to keep this in mind so I don't exceed the 32 foot limit. I used these shrink fit connectors in some spots and soldered in others but always made sure to hide the connectors so that the end result is a seamless stealth look that only exposes itself at night. When it came to landscape lighting I figured out there's a lot of crap out there and some pretty good DIY options. Stay out of the big box store aisles if at all possible that stuff is junk. I'm using a brand called Volt but another good one is Kichler. They're bronze fixtures that should last a very long time. I have zero affiliation with them I just wanted to pass along the result of many hours of my own research. Now initially I actually plan on having a lighting contractor come in design the setup and install it and I'm sure it would have looked amazing but for the cost savings of doing it myself how hard could it really be? Based on a couple back and forths with ChatGBT apparently I want to highlight features like these rocks and maybe the larger plants and some trees to get the vibe that I alluded to earlier. And as much work as this part was it was exciting because over two years of misery were coming to an end. These lights were the last big thing for our backyard transformation and I honestly can't wait to just enjoy it back here and not have to work on it anymore. All right all of the landscape lighting is in all the deck lighting is in but we won't get the full effect until it's dark so we gotta wait till the sun goes down and we can test them out. Now this is my first pass of the lighting job. It's not bad but I do need to adjust some things and boy work on dimming the level of those strip lights under the deck. I mean yikes we might have airplanes trying to land back here. But the vibe is definitely coming together and you can see what we're going for. I'm gonna go get those fixed but you guys can jump to the final reveal in three two one. All right so backyard's done and I promise at the end of the video I was going to share some tips and tricks if you want to maybe do something in your backyard. And I've got the expert himself Rob Fowler, the guy that was integral to making all this come together. So thanks first of all for helping with everything. Thanks for having us out. It came out awesome. Yeah so I've got some rapid fire questions I'm gonna ask Rob. We'll see if we can pull some nuggets out of his head. What is the biggest mistake you see people making when renovating their backyard? The biggest expensive mistakes are like big design changes late in the project. You already have infrastructure we're already kind of worked in and then we maybe add something that requires us to dig back out or in general like once you get going on one of these projects and yours is like here's not just a pool it was kind of a garage a shop right so these projects can kind of get out of control and an aspect of you're focused on this and then you see how how this is developing it's cool and it's like all right well I want to go here with it but now we've boxed ourselves out we can't get electric from this direction um and then you know those workarounds add up to delays or rework or having to go in an expensive route and trench you know farther. Got it. Okay makes sense. Has a backyard project ever come in under budget and ahead of schedule? Not the fun ones. Yeah I mean generally I work in you know we do hardscape and landscape and we work on fixed price projects. Most of our projects as long as they don't have scope creep we can be right on the mark hopefully. Okay. There gets to be a quite a complexity when you start mixing in different specialties you know the pool guy is going to have a direction you've got the garage here outdoor feature you got deck has those all aligned and all the special ads you can put in them with av and all those other things I think everybody can speak to the their scope and timing and cost but when you put it all together and factor in weather that's where you start to get like just duration stretch so. Yeah well I know we experienced that with the outdoor kitchen too because like at the last minute I said hey can you guys pour me a foundation for the outdoor kitchen which was not in scope for you guys. Right. And then we also wanted to run conduit all around the yard so we just kept adding stuff so. Well and then like the wall too I think we um I talked about doing an L wall which is going to be a board footer um and then we ended up with the big boulders and then we had to kind of span that across the the plumbing infrastructure so all kind of unique challenges that pop up and they're not fatal by any means but then we got into like late season weather I think we were supposed to be in September and we started yeah December January yeah with the bulk of our work. Yep right in the cold. Yep. All right this one is not on the list but I saw I got this idea from Cam at Blacktail Studio. Okay. Um we put in a lot of rocks back here yeah big boulders right what would you say the equivalent amount in blue whales that would be? Oh um I think we're uh a half a blue whale. Half of that was an adult blue whale? Well I have no idea what we're shooting for I think we have 200 tons of rock or something. 200 tons? I'll go back through my notes and I'll get you a firm answer on that. I need to look up how big a blue whale is now. I'm almost positive we're between 150 and 200 tons just in uh erosion control chunks not including loose aggregate fill around. Yeah gravel's probably a lot too because I think originally when we pitched this you guys weren't even dug for the pool so I was basically bidding hardscape with setting on their bond beam and then I gave you a five inch uh consolidated base um but then we had like a time of materials for if I need to come up from 20 inches to get to my top five. Yep. Um that was all going to be add plus so. So a lot a lot of blue whale. A lot of blue whales yeah at least one. How should someone create a realistic budget for their space if they want to renovate their backyard? Uh putting all the effort into the design side and like really vetting out wants and needs and where can this go um multiple projects we've been on people get in and they're like I wish we'd have done a pool house with a bathroom even if it's simple but now when you you know vet that back out you're now trying to dig through finish work to get into a sewer so really kind of fleshing out like I maybe don't want the project to go to this expense now but if I don't factor this in what's it going to cost me later to get back into that um so I would think working with a designer and kind of do all your mental reps before you even put a shovel in the ground is probably the best way to approach it. But how would someone get an idea of like you know I want to put in a pool in a hardscape like how do I even come with a ballpark number for that I mean is there are there tools out there to help estimate that use chat gpt I mean um you know chat gpt is coming a long way I do I get a little bit scared on like some of your questions when they start saying square footage numbers because they give a massive range to begin with but like your project you gotta you know pay for driveway right so we can't really come in this way that that immediately creates cost potential um especially once you put the retaining wall in here now I gotta lift everything to try and get over here so efficiencies drop off and you can really get away from those numbers so if you relied solely on that um I think you're setting yourself up for trouble what I would start with is in generally like this project somebody's gonna take lead right so you had a pool builder in here you were kind of acting as a general which is is not really commonplace but um maybe the guy that was building the shed for the original portion of this project ends up overseeing most of site infrastructure and he he can kind of manage his trades and get some reasonable numbers out of them and obviously then you're gonna want everybody to like fix tune it put it on paper give me your best numbers um and you're probably gonna pay that guy you know 10 to 15 to manage the project for every scoop that's underneath of him right but hopefully that person has good relationships long-standing relationships and it's probably enough work with your with their trades that they can move them around quickly whereas like a an owner of the house you know this is a one-off job for them you can say jump but right I'm gonna go to whoever's feeding me every week you know so yeah is that I guess that brings up a good point in question is that typically a nightmare when the homeowner tries to like run everything no um not always I mean this project was fun I think we were I didn't pigeonhole myself into specific time frames with you we just kind of were taken as it was I think as long as you plan for it like we did a huge renovation up at Indian Lake and that um we had like a core scope that we were in on and we just kind of kept working the project and it was we ended up getting a lot more under our umbrella than I'd originally planned to take on um but I think that was because things were going good and fun and they were seeing the space develop and how they can best utilize it um so yeah I don't I don't see it as a problem you just got to plan there's going to be some inefficiencies I think if somebody's not doing that all the time yeah what are some things that seem expensive up front but end up actually being worth it to the homeowner in the backyard specifically I think design spending the money on design even if it's you know 500 bucks you can get a really good 3d rendering design and somebody's uh first take on it and allow you to move around on paper you can spend up to 2500 and really get a comprehensive design to get actual construction documents you're not gonna you might have a lot more into it especially getting the architect and uh structural engineer for certain wall heights and some of those other things but that money doesn't really correlate until you're you're back on paying the bills at the end of it yeah I mean where there's a really good cohesive plan um put together yeah I think I couldn't agree more we did two separate designs so we did a design with the pool and that gave us kind of a first look and then we did another design once we kind of started seeing the space come together and for me I gotta see it like and for someone like you like it's hard to get my idea out of my head and tell you exactly what I want whereas if I can just show you pictures and sure you're like yeah we can make that happen yeah I mean just like trying to work out this corner is like how do we have elevations that eliminate um railings you don't know mean and but this wall has to transition up to this we don't own any of that so we can't regrade yeah like putting that into a 3d rendering program and moving around like I spent forever on that corner just to figure out how can we get here yeah and meet these marks with all the compression that we have so I yeah I would go back to design the other thing too is like it can add up but like conduit conduit runs everywhere because you never know what you're gonna want to do later on and if you don't use a couple of them underneath here you're uh you're paying us to come vacuum these out and re-sand so uh you know throwing two thousand dollars a conduit at a project this scale is probably not unrealistic yeah um but that is kind of a hard sell when you're talking to somebody that's really trying to crunch numbers yeah yeah spend two thousand dollars on something you bury and never look at yeah yeah and then photograph it yeah document it right right remember where it goes yeah yeah so I'm just if something breaks under these pavers I'm just gonna move like I'm just not gonna deal with it just yeah that water line I think we talked about that yeah what's something that is expensive up front but is not always actually worth it you got to be careful with what you purchase that creates maintenance for you right so like we're developing space for relaxation so you get into some of these like specialty uh nuanced features you start dumping a ton of technology into it that's fine if you're a technology person but if you're not yeah then you're going to come out here and you want to show your friends this cool new fangled thing right and you hit the button twice it doesn't go up and now you're yeah you're kind of like steaming over here trying to enjoy yourself so yeah um those can get out of control there's some guys that are really good and tuned into that uh that stuff but that's probably not something you want to let every contractor just upsell you on um we did talk about the griddles I had a lot of clients that come from like a Blackstone and want a built-in the new griddles that we do built in they have a lot thicker uh stainless steel plate so your time to warm up the griddle and your actual heat of your grill is a lot less and um I feel like there's just a lot of disappointment um in this purchase and those aren't cheap you know you're talking $2,500 to plus to get into those yeah I will definitely echo the griddle thing I put we put in a pellet smoker grill and then a griddle and I use the pellet smoker grill 99% of the time so Blackstone make a sexy griddle I know make a built-in people would people would put it in yeah it's not that I don't like it it's just cooking anything besides vegetables just takes forever yeah where can a homeowner save some money that's tough I think it really depends on the homeowner skill sets and their time um like the YouTube channel where they're gonna film it yeah yeah uh I think the best person to answer that's probably your primary contractor um and even be in your interview process is like hey I want to be involved and I want to shave some dollars off this project how can I do so the worst things I've seen is like we've set up for something to be done we mobilize I come in here with four or five guys and now it wasn't done and now I'm I had the wrong equipment set the wrong team here we have to you know demobilize and that's a huge cost to the seven guys home potentially so those are mistakes that can add up pretty quick I think you can get away with one or two of those on a big project like this but if that's happening on a regular it's definitely a conversation piece about how we're going to make up the time lost yeah so but it you know if somebody's finished carpenter like yeah do all your trim work you know and and whoever you're working with they should be able to carve out the pieces that they're comfortable letting you take on and then manage the rest of it for you when we started this I was naive enough to think that I could lay this paver area myself and maybe I could have got away with it and it would have turned out halfway decent but boy am I glad that you guys did yeah because watching you guys work I was like holy I that was way out of my out of my league it's like me you know I'm pretty handy and I stay in my space here we custom clad this with mechanical fasteners and custom template everything and then I try and do drywall and it's just like like a toddler did it I should call it a professional so yeah stay in your lane okay got it I guess this is sort of the same question but what can they do themselves to save money so I guess in reverse like I think shop in your finishes right like we're if budgets matter which they do in general where do you need the highest end things on everything right um like railing for example yeah on a deck the square footage of a deck cost goes through the roof as soon as you put railing on it right so you can go from like a a baseline with powder coated aluminum up into glass and almost triple your linear footage cost so basically kind of working through that um I think is probably your best way like if you want to do high end counter but you want to do a reasonable square footage stone facing uh sometimes you're trapped you're but um just really reflecting on those areas I think is where you can save save yourself money where it matters or where it doesn't matter I should say what would you recommend always calling professionals for and why I think all your trades my experience is you don't know what you don't know so and that's what always bites you in the end you do the three quarters of the steps right and there's this one thing you're like oh I was supposed to waterproof that first yeah now you're tearing out to get back to uh you know the guys are doing that on an every day should be efficient they should be you know they're worth their money so they're going to charge a right rate but they should save you in the end yeah again that kind of goes back to your team too like we're selling time back as much as we're selling uh sure you know a tangible service is like well we're you know we're mowing grass it's not like you can't move around grass but you got the job right kids in soccer right um you don't want to do on the weekend so um just figuring out what makes sense for everybody um from the entire team yep couldn't agree more I really wish I could have paid somebody to build that deck but I'd make it myself all right last one what would you have done different in this backyard be honest fire pit gas fire feature up here um if we would have done the l walls uh actuated tv cabinet oh a pop-up tv out of the wall yeah so we started doing those last year why don't you sell me harder on that we should but i've got it integrated into their l wall system now so it would basically look like a a lidded planter and then we just push tv out but um you still got space for that gas fire feature down there well we're talking about rework how about we rip out that wall a couple yeah I want to look like you bring you by the crane back here well thanks Rob I appreciate it yeah thank you man this is fun yeah I love the deck you did an awesome job thank you it all uh it came together really well um Rob is with Lawn Innovations if you're in the Ohio area check them out well worth it thanks thanks all right so two years a ton of work and we're finally done and it feels amazing just be able to enjoy this space and go over there and take a seat and just finally relax oh oh man this is nice hey Travis can we redo the front yard now yep be right there