Man Spends Months And $43,000 On The Wildest Gift For His Wife

Chris is a construction worker and body-builder, while Sharon is a business owner. “The business suddenly took off and went a bit crazy,” Chris explained. The process of bringing their dream project to life was not just difficult, but extremely time consuming.

That’s how the couple’s tight schedules began — and their lack of free time. “We’re both housebound and office-bound,” Chris said, and there’s one other factor that keeps the Lodges closer to home than they’d hoped.

Their dog, Dice. “[Dice] suffers from little seizures now and then so we don’t like to leave him,” Chris said. With Dice’s medical problems and their busy schedules, the young couple had to give up something that many people take for granted.

“We haven’t been able to go on holiday for about six years,” Chris admitted. The couple were in serious need of a vacation…and Chris knew exactly how to get one without taking away from their growing business.

The first step to making his dream a reality was to do some research, and by “research” we mean he stepped into his backyard and looked around. That’s when his eyes landed on his willow tree. Immediately, an ambitious idea started to take shape.

He imagined palm fronds, torches, totem poles — your classic Hawaiian getaway. If he and Sharon couldn’t go to Honolulu in real life, then he’d bring it to their very own backyard. Still, even early in the construction process, Chris ran into some problems.

His construction knowledge served him well, but he soon realized that it was the landscaping that would bring his backyard oasis to life. With very little experience to go by, Chris took the ultimate plunge.

He dug up his entire backyard! Chris consulted YouTube for landscaping tutorials and laid bright green grass down to create a summery lawn. He spent hours researching which exotic plants would work in the cold, rainy UK clime.

Over two years time, Chris became the proud owner of palm trees, succulents, and alien-like plants from the internet. Using his willow tree for inspiration, his backyard slowly transformed into a jungle…but he needed more than greenery to bring his paradise to life.

That’s when Chris’ construction background finally came in handy. Everyone knows the importance of making an entrance, and Chris made the walk into his paradise as relaxing as possible with just timber, driftwood, and rope.

Chris built a rope bridge leading into the backyard. The journey across the bridge takes you from real life to paradise, and Chris’ next move was deciding what would be at the other end of the bridge. He knew it had to be a show-stopper.

Chris had a $5,500 shed to work with, and he went all-out to turn it into the tiki bar of his dreams. He painstakingly covered the roof with dried grass roofing and palm fronds to give it that “tropical” look. Next up — the inside!

Inside of the hut, Chris built a genuine tiki bar. He used bleached wooden planks and rope to build the bar and attached authentically-carved totems to the outside. Still, there was a lot of backyard left to transform!

You can’t have an island oasis without one thing — water! With the bridge and bar complete, Chris focused on how he would incorporate an impressive water feature into his backyard. It wasn’t a hard choice to make: What’s Pacific-themed and aesthetically pleasing?

A koi pond, of course! But with Chris as contractor, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it wouldn’t be just any old koi pond. He dug a huge hole, surrounded it with rocks, shrubs, and gravel, and made one very special purchase.

You can’t have a koi pond without koi, and Chris had a pond, waterfall, and multi-color underwater lights for his. He even added a few sturgeon fish to the mix! Still, with the pond completed, there was more to be done.

Chris was now fully invested in the project — “I was hooked,” he admitted — and as a self-proclaimed stickler for detail, it was time for him to focus on the tropical finishing touches. In his case, the details truly made all the difference.

Twinkling string lights wrapped around palm trees, rusted barrels, tiki torches, plastic flamingos, gnarled netting that seemingly came from a pirate ship. These were the finishing touches that made Chris and Sharon’s backyard the ideal vacation destination.

After two years of digging, hammering, Googling, and decorating, the Lodge’s staycation paradise was finally complete! Walking across that bridge is like entering another world — or, as they call it, “The Freaky Tiki.” There was still a not-so-relaxing task at hand, however.

Tallying up the cost of such a project! The couple spent $43,000 on their little paradise, and with a cost like that, it’s no wonder they spend a good portion of their free time there…not that they built it just for themselves.

“I want it to be a place where all our friends can come to if they’re having a bad day,” Chris said. And like all good vacations, Chris isn’t sure if his own will ever end.

Since “finishing” the paradise, Chris couldn’t help but add to it! There’s now an outdoor room called the “Reef Cavern” — which looks like it belongs to a grizzled sea captain — a bonfire, and even more plants, which have become a passion of his.