Newport Daily News
Patti and Dennis Shafer were used to small spaces. After all, they’d spent years living in a New York City apartment. So when they moved into their refurbished 1890 cottage on a narrow, postcard-pretty lane in Newport, the size didn’t faze them.
The yard, however, was a different story. “It was a mess,” Dennis says bluntly. Much of the lawn had been sacrificed to a broad deck spanning the entire rear of the house. A handful of perennials sat forlornly in cobblestone-edged beds, and the gate leading from the street to the back of the house was falling down. Most problematic of all was an imposing concrete retaining wall topped with a stockade fence that loomed over the back of the property. “The house behind us is elevated about 20 feet and has this big barrier wall,” Dennis explains.