Courtyard Makeover

Who likes home improvement projects?! I happen to love a home improvement project, but they can be daunting, expensive and so much work. We purchased our home in May of 2018 thinking that it had fantastic potential and was only in need of a face lift. Oh, how wrong we were! We have since been working on home improvement projects non-stop, but today I am going to talk about the makeover we have (mostly) completed in out courtyard.

One of the things we loved most about our home when we saw it was that it has a front courtyard with a walk-out from the master bedroom. There is a half wall and fence that give privacy, since it is in the front of the house, and house is also pretty far back from the street. When we first saw the courtyard, it had a mix of sidewalks, white rock, ceramic figures and a winding, brick wall dividing the space.

This is how the courtyard looked when we viewed the house.

We knew that we liked this area, but did not love how it looked, and I was not sure what changes we wanted to make. The brick wall looked to be in good shape and we assumed that it had been there since an addition had been completed on the home in the 80’s. We got very busy with other, more urgent projects, planned a wedding and got married in our backyard. Then in March of 2020 we started having some plumbing issues…

Our home was built in 1957. We learned that at this time the city of Des Moines was using something called Orangeburg for sewer pipes. If, like us, you are unfamiliar with Orangeburg pipe: it “is a type of home sewer pipe used in many properties built from 1945 to 1972. Also known as “no-corrode” pipe, Orangeburg is a type of bituminized fiber pipe made from a mixture of hot pitch and wood pulp”. That’s correct, our sewer pipes were made of cardboard and tar. During World War II, there was an iron and steel shortage. Because of this, Orangeburg pipe was invented. After the war, Orangeburg continued to be used because it was cheap. It was expected to last 50 years max. Our’s lasted longer than that, but I wish we had known about this ahead of time!

This is what the Orangeburg looked like when they dug it up. It had started to collapse.

We had to have our sewer pipes completely relaid and the courtyard had to be dug up. It was such a nightmare! We had a porta potty in our driveway for the month of April and could not use our bathrooms in the house.

Once the work was complete, we were $25,000 poorer and had a total mess to fix. They had to dig under our house to reach all of the pipes. This tore up some of the cement and damaged parts of the wall in the courtyard. The white rock was gone and we were left with dirt.

The bricks on the wall started to crumble and fail. We found out (through a previous owner) that the brick wall was actually constructed in the 60’s. Whoever built it also built it right under the roof line of the house. Over the years the wall was subjected to a lot of water. The bricks were also painted using the wrong kind of paint. Because masonry paint was not used, the bricks started to crumble inside and, once disturbed, started to fall apart. We had no idea this was happening. We noticed some peeling paint, but could not see how bad it was inside.

These pictures show how the bricks were starting to fail.

We had no choice but to decide what we wanted to do with this space and how we planned to use it. I put my ideas to paper and then drew a plan for how I wanted the space to look and function. Some options we discussed were that we could lose the whole wall, we could take down the wall and have a new one built or try to save part of the wall.

This is my scaled sketch of the direction I wanted to take the space. I did this drawing with the plan to keep the wall as it was.

Ultimately, we decided that the portion of the wall under the roof line was beyond saving. I was still up in the air about taking the whole thing down or rebuilding it. I really love how the wall provides some privacy and divides the space. So, we started with taking down the portion of the wall that we knew was beyond saving.

Taking the wall down was so much harder and so much more work than we anticipated. The amount of damaged bricks was so heavy that even disposing of them became an issue. However, once we got the damaged bricks off and were left with a c-shaped area, I knew this was where we should stop. I loved it! We still had privacy but the area felt much more open too. It cemented my ideas and other decisions became a lot easier. We still had a lot of work to do to save the section of the wall that remained. We had to cut some bricks where the corner was and, even on this section, a lot of bricks needed repair work.

This shows the corner where we had to cut the bricks and how much more open the area was after removing part of the wall.

I decided to plant sedum as a ground cover where the white rocks had been before. We already had a dwarf cherry tree planted here before the construction began. Planting this tree was one of the first things I did when we moved in. Fortunately, we were able to dig up the tree and replant it after the digging was done. I was thrilled when we got bowls full of cherries this summer even after the tree going through all of that!

Next on the list was to try to save the part of the wall we wanted to keep. I started by scraping any loose paint on all surfaces of the remaining wall.

This was during the paint scraping.

After scraping, my husband used different mortar patches and caulk products to re-grout the bricks, repair the bricks and fill in any holes.

This is how the wall looked after the repairs.

Next up was the finishing work to paint and seal the brick - this time with the correct paint. I always think this part is so satisfying! The product I used was Loxon from Sherwin Williams. I am not advertising their product, there are other brands that make a similar product, but this is what I used and I really liked it. It is a two-step process with a primer and top coat. The top coat is tint-able to any color you would like.

This shows the difference that just the primer makes.

And!!! Here is the final result. I really hope all of our efforts to save this section of the wall were worth it. Time will tell how well it will wear, but I am really pleased with how it turned out. I think I completed painting it in the very last few warm days of November.

This view shows the finished wall and one of the black planters we made.

In the end, this project took us 7 months to complete. We found a sectional that perfectly fits within this “c” shaped section of the wall, and I also found a perfect black and white striped umbrella to create a shady oasis. To save some money, we collected palettes and re-used them to make some planters, as shown in the drawing. I painted them black and cannot wait to fill them up in the spring! For now, they are holding my fall decor. Under the leaves, the sedum has almost completely filled in and I am very happy with this decision. The area has taken on a warmer and more inviting feeling.

These are two of the palette planters we made.

We still have plans to replace the iron fence and gate with a wood one that has more of an MCM aesthetic. We are also planning to sandwich cedar planks over the ironwork on the filigree posts. Eventually we will need to replace some of the doors and possibly some of the cement walk ways too. I would like to add a water feature on the sedum side, but we are so close to complete.

Thank you for reading and please let me know your thoughts or horror home repair stories in the comments below.