All The “Hows”, “Whys” And “How Much’s” Of The Turf At The Mountain House + Introducing My Landscape Designer – Brian Henderson

Few debates have run so all-consuming and lengthy as the “should we have bark, sod, or turf in the backyard” at the mountain house. It’s right up there with other compelling debates, like “The 2019 almost marriage altering wood ceiling argument” and “Where the heck do we put the TV and can I please have one in our bedroom?”. Ah … oldies but goodies. These debates usually run a year long and we get SO SICK of talking about them, changing our mind, weighing cost, function, practicality, and yes style, in hopes that there would be a clear winner.

Wanna watch a little video about the whole backyard plan before we dig into the post?? Me too. (Just wait until the ad plays)

The Debate Between Real Sod And Artificial Grass/Turf

Before we moved up here full time we were fine with the bark. We didn’t love it, but it was appropriate and easy and pre-dogs it didn’t bother us. But that’s changed. Besides the bark we had these two options:

Real Sod:

The Pros: Real grass – when healthy – is prettier than fake. It’s a lot cheaper upfront (we already had irrigation as the family that lived here a decade ago had real grass). It is soft and comfy for falls.

The Cons: It’s illegal to put in real sod up here due to water usage (we would be criminals!), it freezes in the winter so we worried that we would be able to maintain it well and we had a lot of shade in the summer so we were worried about it thriving without enough sun.

Artificial Turf:

The Pros: Very little maintenance, year-round green, little mess/dirt for kids especially when it rains/snows. Practical AF.

The Cons: It’s expensive up front (anywhere between $6 – $15 a square foot installed), it can look fake and bad if not done right. It can get hot in the sun.

Neither was a clear choice…

Enter The Dogs – The Ultimate Deciders

Enter the dogs – the final turf decision-makers. When the dogs arrived, we had bark out in the back – a typical and very affordable mountain landscape choice. They “enjoyed” this bark a lot and spent most of their unsupervised time jumping in the pond, then chasing each other back and forth only to end up digging up dirt around the perimeter, bathing in mud and bark. Meanwhile, all the dust from the bark floated its way into our home, permeating every room. We knew that we had to get rid of the bark within days of having these dirty little pups. But do we install real sod? Well like the grass gods answering our prayers (wouldn’t it be awesome it if were always this easy?), the next week we brought down the dogs to LA to stage the house and those little mothers started digging holes in the middle of the grass in our backyard. We couldn’t stop them. The second they were let outside they would dig up everything! We were going to replace the sod anyway there (and we did) but it made it clear that these two mud pups will abuse any future grass. DONE. TURF. IT. IS.

So we did what any designer + husband team would do – we rushed the process because we were going mentally a little cuckoo dealing with muddy pups every day destroying our house. We knew that we wanted a fire pit area and a hot tub (this is a mountain house and both feel like long term investments for winter – and if we ever Airbnb it, it obviously adds a lot of value). But I was being a perfectionist and “cared about the design too much” so Brian took this project over to speed it up. I agreed that this wasn’t where we should spend a ton of money or be too precious. We are up here for at least a year but after that who knows? And if we didn’t do it quickly we wouldn’t get it done until after winter as a lot of the exterior construction stops late November – April. WE HAD TO HURRY.

We Got Multiple Quotes

So our first quote from a landscape contractor included turf for most of the yard (around 1700 square feet), plus a stone path to a stone patio where the two boulders are, creating a natural gas fire pit area. This quote came in at $56k, which we thought was incredibly high and frankly shocked us. He thought maybe he could get it down to $45k and this did NOT include digging the trench for the gas, hooking up the gas (done by a plumber), or laying the slab for the hot tub. We knew that landscaping your house is almost as expensive as renovating the inside – mostly because of labor, but we had not predicted this.

So we got another quote, slowing down the process (but still rushing too fast, don’t worry!). This time we called Save Pro Turf and we had an amazing experience (not gifted or given a press discount – just super impressed with the product and service). We decided to not spend the money on a stone patio and instead just put down pebbles and we nixed a path I wanted since we didn’t really NEED it after all. By doing this we got the quote for $16k. Now, this didn’t include bark removal, tree trunk removal, some grading, trenching the gas line, installing the gas line ($850), and lastly pouring the slab for the future hot tub. These things will add up to a few thousands of dollars, but they were still FAR under that $56k quote. Plus, the turf was in stock and they were available to do it 3 weeks later (many of the other companies we called were booked through November, and then depending on weather they might not have been able to do it til spring – NOOOOOOO!!!). We could NOT live with that bark. It was making our house DISGUSTING, the dust, the mud, the chewing of the bark all over the house, NOOO.

The Scramble To Find Sub-Contractors

I don’t know how it is where you live but up here, all contractors and subs are SLAMMED with work. It’s great for them, but as a homeowner, it was almost impossible to book any subs for these jobs (and no one really cares about my Instagram following which I only reluctantly mention as a hail mary JUST IN CASE). I reached out to our GC Jeff Malcom (who did the mountain house) and asked for him to ask his subs for us, and while he tried to help he reminded me that “subs will always prioritize working for general contractors over homeowners because they’ll get consistent long term work from them, whereas with a homeowner it’s just a one-time thing”. Fine.

So we were scrambling to find crews to de-bark, trench for gas pipe, grade the earth, and then get a plumber to install the pipe for the gas. It was also labor day weekend and no one wanted to work overtime, understandably… without a pretty penny at least. So we ended up paying far more to get crews to come on the weekend or after hours. The turf was coming on September 8th and if we didn’t have the yard ready by then they couldn’t do it for another month after that. But by rushing it we paid about 30% more for labor to get it all ready in time. FUN!

We lived with the de-barked – full dirt backyard for over a week which wasn’t ideal (remember dogs and kids), but also fun for the kids as we had some great mud-ball fights that horrified Brian and admittedly took days to get out of my hair.

INSTALL TIME

Here’s what I can’t recommend enough: hire a very experienced turf company that specializes in turf to install. There are many ways to mess this up and make it A. look terrible or B. not last as long as it should (pull up on the edges, not prepped properly underneath, etc). Save Pro Turf knew exactly what they were doing. They came out twice to do drawings and measurements and mapped it all out.

The day of the install they arrived with close to 10 guys – all so pleasant and genuinely seemed like they loved their job. I mention that as a huge compliment to Jeff who runs the company – that he clearly takes care of his team (some have been with him for 10 years). They did some additional grading and started prepping the earth. This included spreading out a recycled concrete layer to compact and act as a weed barrier.

Brian and I had to go to LA to shoot something so while we were gone his parents kept sending me photos and videos of the process and it was INTENSE. They arrived at 8 am on Wednesday and they were totally done by Thursday afternoon! I do think that this is unusual and they said they had double the crews to make sure they finished before a massive job the following week (so I wouldn’t typically expect it to take such a short time).

Do We Love It???

OH, DO WE. It instantly changed our backyard and lives. The kids can actually use it, play on it, lay on it. The pups can run around and if they avoid the pond/dirt they remain clean! If they are unsupervised and they DO get in the pod and dirt then the faux grass almost acts as a big doormat and brushes it off of them if they stay out there long enough.

Does It Look Real??

Artificial grass rarely fools you completely. But in my opinion, there are five factors that help it look more real:

Get high-quality turf that has multiple shades of green and brown in it. We chose Pro80 that was sourced through the turf company (it doesn’t sell direct to consumer as far as I can see and that is because they don’t want consumers to order and try to install it on their own). It’s a darker green which is more appropriate for the mountains (as opposed to a brighter that might be more “Palm Springs-y”). It has some brown on the inside which gives it some dimension.

FUN FACT: Most turf is only $2-4 per square foot, it’s the install that makes it between $7 – $15 (ours was $8/square foot with install)
Get professional turf installers to install. After watching them do it, it is an art form that requires experience. Like installing expensive wallpaper, if you aren’t going to have someone good do it, you might just be wasting your money. Don’t totally flatten your yard. A perfectly flat rectangle of a yard with turf definitely looks more like a putting green and a little fake. It’s OK if this is what you have, It’s not like you should “add hills” but if you have some sloping or some movement, keep it – it looks more real. Break it up. Like tip #3, the more you break it up the more real it looks mostly because it’s so bright and green (and perfect) that your eye doesn’t believe it’s real if it’s just a huge field of perfect primary green. Broken up with pathways, fire pits, boulders, decking, etc will help it look less fake. Shade and dappling are your friends. It’s my opinion that a dapple or shade makes it look more real than full sun. It just creates movement and a natural element. Not that you can add shade that easily, but if you are worried about it looking fake and you have a lot of shade know that the shade helps.

Now I know that many of you will never be on board with faux, but admittedly the second that the decision was “forced upon us” and more importantly the night that it was installed I was SO RELIEVED and secretly SO happy that this is our future. It would be like a doctor telling you to only wear Uggs or to start eating more french fries. The lack of maintenance of this grass really checks a huge box for us permanently despite it not always being my first style choice.

But We Still Rushed Some Things…

Jeff (our contractor) told us after we had booked everything that we were being hasty putting in artificial turf FIRST, that it’s like installing the carpet before you’ve painted the walls. Oh Jeff, don’t be so boring. I knew he was right but desperation for turf NOW was leading the hasty machine. So here is what we kinda rushed:

We still need to do some construction – like a new fence (Brian doesn’t agree but I want a pretty painted wood fence). So that will be a decent amount of construction near our pretty new grass. Whoops. We forgot about the trampoline. The Saturday after we installed the grass and our fire pit (how pretty is that fire pit!!) my workout tramp arrived. The kids jumped on it, so happy, and Brian and I looked at each other at the EXACT same time and said “oh shoooooooot”. The only place we could have put an in-ground tramp is where the firepit is – fully installed with natural gas. That was the original plan that we honestly just FORGOT about!!! So what I’d love from you is for you guys to say things like “our kids never use our tramp” or “it’s a waste of money and dangerous”‘. We might be able to put in an above-ground one (with the safety net) outside the guest room door but we ruined our chance to put it here. And you can’t really do it now because trying to patch the turf where the boulders are would look silly. WHOOPS. The design of the hot tub area was barely even thought about because we were so busy trying to coordinate the subcontractors and now we are locked into having the grass stop where it is, in a straight line. We’ll make it work, but it might not be the prettiest hot tub area ever. **Update: we found the last hot tub on sale in a 100-mile radius (like the last one left for MONTHS, none were arriving till late November) so we snagged it. Is it a pretty round cedar tub? HA NO. Brian Henderson would die without the ability to sit on faux marbled moulded plastic with hydrotherapy jets going into his armpits. But after researching I realized that the only BEAUTIFUL spas are custom/site-specific spas (built into a pool area with custom surrounds + very expensive) or are round cedar ones that you have to sit vertically in (Brian shakes his head in horror). So since I have to give up on “beautiful”, I’m opting for “affordable”, “fast” and “Not visually offensive??”. Cheers to low expectations! The fire pit area is pretty darn big and could have been smaller. There was some miscommunication and then boom, it was done.