About Backyard Builder

Backyard Builder is a record of backyard projects that got built instead of just planned: a shed, a chicken coop, a raised deck, a pergola, a workshop that has been "almost done" for longer than we'd like to admit. Every project here happened on one half-acre lot in the North Carolina Piedmont, with real clay soil, real humidity, and a real budget that had limits.

This site exists for people who look at a contractor's quote for a backyard project and decide to figure it out themselves instead, not because they're confident they'll get it right, but because the quote was worse than the risk of getting it wrong. We publish plans, material lists, and honest timelines for the kind of projects homeowners actually take on: storage sheds, coops, decks, pergolas, small workshops. If a plan didn't survive contact with an actual yard, that gets written up too.

Right now, five years into this, the workshop at the back of the lot is still three-quarters framed: OSB sheathing on the east and north walls, a blue tarp stretched over the open south end because winter arrived before the siding did. That's the honest state of most projects here at some point. Nothing on this site gets written up as finished until it actually is.

Backyard Builder is run by Chris Nolan and her husband Dave, who are not contractors, not architects, and by their own admission not especially good at measuring twice. Their full story, including the parts that went wrong, is on the author page.

Some links here earn us a commission when you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. We only link to plans and tools we've used on our own builds.