Welcome to this weeks Tour Tuesday! Sorry, it’s been awhile since we did this; I am really slipping with my Tour Tuesdays! Anyway, today is a great one so I hope that makes up for my absence over the last month. We are spending some time at my friend Becky’s home (specifically her backyard) in Fairfield, CA. I met Becky about four years ago. You may remember her Tour Tuesday with her kitchen a few posts back. We initially bonded over international adoption (her son Judah was born in Rwanda) and that grew to a shared love of DIY, faith and all things home decor. I love Becky and her family and I really love this backyard. Come take a walk with me as we see this beautiful space and learn how she and her husband pulled this whole backyard together.

Me: “Hi Becky! Thanks for letting me hang out in your backyard today! OK, so tell me a little about what this space was like when you first purchased the house.”

Becky: “It was a jungle! The pool was a black pond, there was no deck, and the entire patio was a sunroom. There were weeds everywhere, and we couldn’t even access the side yard around the sun room where my table is now, because of an overgrown hedge of bushes that was actually falling into the pool!”

Me: “YIKES. You would never know it from the looks of the place now. You guys have done an amazing job with this space! When you first started dreaming up this space, what was the feeling you were going for?”

Becky: “We wanted to create a patio to entertain on first, so we initially got to work on the sunroom to convert the space into a patio. We quickly hired a pool service to take over our pool drama, and then leveled the grassy area to put a perimeter around it and a lawn. We wanted to add some curve to the space to break up the rectangular space of the patio, as well as compliment the shape of the pool. We wanted a space that was inviting and flowed well with the awkward position of the pool in the yard.”

Me: “What was the hardest part of pulling together your backyard space? The easiest? The most FUN?! Do tell!”

Becky: “The hardest part for sure was finding what to do with the odd triangular space created from the pool’s edge, the grass edge & the patio edge. We opted to lay cement there, and on the side of the patio, which allowed us to put in a fire pit (which we LOVE!) and a table with an umbrella on the side.”

“That gave us the opportunity to create a sitting area on the patio, which is hands-down my favorite part of the yard! The easiest part of pulling the backyard together was paying someone else to build the deck! The most fun was watching my kids jump in the pool for the first time!”

Me: “Tell us a little about the chicken coop: did you build it yourselves or was it a kit? Talk about these chickens!”

Becky: “Most of the coop was built from recycled materials we salvaged from the sunroom. We painted the boards, of course, but we really wanted to compliment the red patio rug and table umbrella to tie it all together. We wanted to protect our feathered girls as much as possible from predators, so we put the galvanized metal with tight seams around the entire interior. I feel like it looks better than chicken wire, lasts longer and protects better.”

“As for the actual coop, we built the frame, and then the walls. But we felt like we really wanted to create a barn look, so we found some wood, re-claimed it, and cut it up to shingle the walls. EASY! Then we bought some roofing material to keep the water out, put a weather vane from ETSY on top, and VIOLA! We love our birds – we have lost 2 in the last 2 years, but have added 4 more.”

The kids have named them: Bravo, Cuckoo, Fuzzy Cheeks, Dynamite, Grace Kelly and Eleanor Roosevelt. Our next flock, I get to name. They will all be gold buff orpington‘s and their names will be Blanche, Dorothy, Rose and Sophia. 😉

Me: “I am not much of a chicken person, but your chickens are beautiful :). I fully support the chicken coop! What are a few of your favorite sources for some of the things we see here in your backyard?”

Becky: “I absolutely love taking old and making new from it. Old wood from the sunroom became our chicken coop. My grandfather’s old potting table became our coffee table. The old grain feeder became our beverage cooler that we can fill with ice and drinks at parties.”

“I don’t like to spend a ton of money in the backyard, so I always look to buy used and save the difference (doesn’t always work but it’s my natural go-to). My husband and I dream a little together, shop around at John’s Hauling together, I look on Pinterest, give him an idea, then he usually refines it. We take the resources we have at that time, and try to put something together. We scour Craigslist and the Marketplace on FB, Let Go and Offer Up. Then we see if it sticks:)

I know we love red, black, white and galvanized metal, so that pallet is our standard for moving forward in any of our choices. I recently went on the Master Gardener Tour of Fairfield and am now even more excited to bring in more plants to add pops of color!

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THANK YOU Fisher Family for letting me crash your backyard with my camera. Becky is one of those people that I could sit and talk to for 42 hours and never get bored and or run out of things to say. She is inspiring and awesome and I have a lot of respect for her and her family. Becky and her sister Rachel are the owners and talent behind Wurzbach Fisher, a photography studio specializing in portrait work. Their photographs are pieces of art; I LOVE what they do. You can check out their business website here and Instagram feed here.