DIY enthusiast Ashley Rack turned her Sunderland garden into a stylish living space on a BASIC BUDGET of £6,000
BEFORE
Pre-glow-up the bird’s eye view did nothing but ruffle Ashley’s feathers
AFTER
Now it’s a welcome sight and a real feather in her DIY cap!
Ashley Rack has always been a DIY lover, from helping her dad as a child to single-handedly renovating her first house then, most recently, taking on a full garden redesign and construction. “I’m a very practical person,” she says. “I love challenging myself and nothing fazes me. Why pay someone to do the work when you could have a go yourself?”
It’s that can-do attitude that’s transformed the Sunderland spot from a bare back lawn to the striking space it is today. The PE teacher was undaunted by the plot’s uneven gradient, lack of plants, and even her husband’s reluctance to get stuck in. “Russell hates DIY almost as much as I love it!” she laughs. “He was happy for me to crack on, and made good cups of tea. He appreciates my hard work, and I get to feel smug when I tell him how much cash I saved us!”
SELF-TAUGHT SKILLS
After moving to the newbuild detached 10 years ago, the couple felt frustrated by the garden’s layout. An impractical descending slope and lack of patio meant relaxing out there was tricky, and entertaining out of the question. In the early years Ashley added a few plants and paving slabs, but with young children and a now-much-missed family dog to contend with, a garden makeover was put on hold.
Fast forward almost a decade and Ashley was finally ready to embark on her dream DIY project. Taking an aerial photo of the garden from the newly extended loft window allowed her to visualise a layout. “I used my phone’s photo edit function to mark up where everything would sit,” she explains. “Having a bird’s eye view and drawing lines out electronically and to scale was really helpful.”
On Ashley’s wishlist was a corner seating arrangement in the sunny bottom lefthand corner, a pergola for shade and structural interest, and a decent-sized patio for entertaining, and to bring an inside-out feel. Style-wise, Ashley strove for a Japandi look, a blend of cosy Scandinavian and minimalist Japanese. “I love natural materials and interesting textures, and I’m also drawn to contemporary clean lines,” she explains. “My interior colour scheme is mostly white and neutrals with pops of black, and I wanted that to flow outside.”
FIRST THINGS FIRST
Ashley was raring to go when it came to the less glamorous but crucial issue of ground preparation. She ripped the old patio slabs and turf out, and landscaped the ground to create split levels. Working at weekends and evenings, alone and entirely by hand, she dug down to create a lower tier, and added two tonnes of topsoil for the patio
