The Excitement of Building a Backyard Ramp: A Journey of Design and Construction

As I sat down to talk about my latest project, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and nervousness. We're building a backyard ramp, and it's going to be a game-changer for our home and our riding experiences. The idea was born when we added two more hips to the original design, giving us a circular flow to the park that would allow for a unique and fun ride. However, we soon realized that with the increased speed, hitting the hip might not be the most comfortable or safe option.

To address this issue, I came up with the idea of putting an extension on the ramp, which would provide an alternative route for riders to take instead of relying on the hip. This extension also offered the possibility of adding a roller landing, which would add an extra layer of fun and challenge to the ride. The box jump was another feature we were planning to include, with a 5-foot lip and a 6ft landing. We wanted to ensure that the ride felt like it was designed for riders of all skill levels, with enough clearance to avoid feeling like they're casing over the box.

As we moved forward with the design, I realized that having an extension would not only provide an alternative route but also create more space for expansion and growth in our backyard. We have room for almost another channel of expansion next to the fence and towards the front of the house by the patio, which gives us plenty of opportunities to add new features or ramps in the future. My next step was to talk to our neighbors and ensure that they were comfortable with the design, despite it not being directly on their property. We're fortunate to have good neighbors who understand the project and are excited about the possibilities.

With the design largely set, I turned my attention to figuring out what we would do for fencing around the entire back area of our yard. We want to enclose the space and make sure that it's secure, not just for liability reasons but also to prevent trespassing. Security cameras are another priority for us, as they'll help keep an eye on the area and deter any potential issues. I've been researching different options for fencing and security systems, and we're excited to see what works best for our needs.

The ramp is scheduled to be completed in less than a month, which is unusually quick for a project of this scope. We're starting construction on January 4th, and we're all eager to get started. The thought of being able to ride our new backyard ramp in under two weeks is exhilarating, and we can't wait to share the experience with our friends and family.

One thing that's been on my mind lately is the logistics of purchasing a truck for this project. We'll need something sturdy and reliable to transport materials and equipment around the yard. I'm not one for making big purchases at once, so I'd rather take some time to assess our needs and budget before committing to anything. However, the excitement around this project has me feeling more confident than ever that we're on the right track.

As I look back on the journey so far, it's clear that building a backyard ramp is going to be an adventure like no other. With its unique design, exciting features, and potential for expansion, this project has it all. We can't wait to share the process with our audience, from designing the ramp to testing out the tricks and features. The first ride, with all the jumps and hips, is going to be a moment to remember – and we're honored that you'll be joining us on this journey.

The final touches are being put in place, and we can't wait to get our hands dirty and start building. We've ordered the wood and ramp armor, and the design is largely set. If you have any suggestions or ideas for how we could make this project even better, feel free to share them in the comments below. Hit that like button if you're as excited about this project as I am – and stay tuned for our next video, where we'll be installing a two-post lift in our garage. It's going to get interesting, but it's all worth it for the joy of building something amazing.

As we head into the holiday season, we want to take a moment to express our gratitude to you, our audience, who have been with us every step of the way. We're like family to each other, and we couldn't do this without your support. So here's to a happy Christmas, and we look forward to sharing more adventures with you in the new year.

The last but not least, as the old saying goes, "sticks and stones may break your bones, but sharing this video will never hurt you."

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is big I've been keeping this a secret and I've been so excited to share it with you guys but I wanted to wait for the perfect time to release the news TV shows always do Christmas special so I thought what better time to release this super exciting news than on Christmas day I hope your Christmas is going awesome you guys got all the stuff you wanted and please don't be antisocial in the corner watching this video chances are there's a lot of people that you only get to see this one time of year so make sure you spend some time with them appreciate the people in your life cuz you never know if this could be that very last time you ever see them enough of that though let's get to the exciting stuff anyone else of my again she depends on you she depends on again you the time has finally come and we are building a backyard skate park I think one of the coolest things about our garage project is that you guys have gotten to see everything from the design phase onward and you get to kind of enjoy the progress as it comes to life now although I've been talking about wanting to build a ramp in the backyard since we got this house I've kind of been keeping the progress a secret so for this video I want to bring you guys back through the process and explain everything that I've gone through designing to budget to cost to planning to when it's going to be here here and how fun it's going to be before we even got our first house I knew that I wanted to have a backyard ramp and having a suitable backyard was one of the biggest factors when we were choosing houses this house had a large pretty private and very flat backyard but the issue with Florida is that almost every single house in a nice area has a homeowners association which are like giant no NOS for ramps they tell you what you can and can't do on your property so it was very tough finding a place that did not have home owners Association but we did I probably could build a pretty good setup in the backyard but I have so many projects going on and so little time that I know it would take years for me to even get a setup that actually uses the full backyard and is fun a ramp that I build would probably be a little bit sketchy which can definitely be fun but I wanted a ramp that's perfect everything with this house I've been obsessing over it and I'm just so detail oriented that having a sketchy ramp next to a really sick house just wouldn't mesh up right in my head with some things it's just better to leave it to the professionals I'll get a better ramp I'll get it done faster and it'll probably last way longer there are so many ramp Builders out there some that are super wellknown some that are kind of low-key but still build great ramps a pro BMX rider by the name of Cory rowski started a ramp company called ramped construction I've been paying attention to the ramps that they built on Facebook and what really caught my attention was that their ramps weren't just big hunks of wood they were artistic pieces they had lots of little details and they just looked over the top which which is exactly what I want for our backyard what really sold me though is that Cory and his crew are BMX riders and the last thing I would want to do is have help from a skateboarder design my ramp and then not have transition that would feel good on a bike building a ramp is a lot of work so if you choose the wrong dimensions and you build a box jump that's really hard to clear or is too short or just doesn't feel good that's a lot of wasted time and money so I hit up Cory and we started the process the budget I had come up with for the ramp was $30,000 that may sound like a lot to you but for a ramp that's really not that much just the wood alone cost so much and if you want to have a decent Siz ramp you're going to be spending quite a bit of money at the time I viewed the ramp as a sunk cost basically once it's built it's worth nothing if we ever moved I can't move that big of a ramp so I just figured it's practically garbage but the cool thing is for me with my brand and the YouTube channel I can justify a cost like that as a business investment because if it enables me to ride more produce more content and draw new people to the Channel with this Allure of this awesome skate park in my backyard over a period of time it will in fact pay for it s the situation that I'm in is obviously unique and I'm incredibly grateful for it I'm not bragging I just want to explain to you guys that I don't view this as just throwing money away the next question is surface I actually have a ramp in my backyard in Connecticut and that ramp was made out of pressure treated plywood it's withstood like five winners and we can still ride it but it definitely shows sign of weathering and wear some of the panels are warped it's a little spongy and it's not as smooth as it used to be but pressure treated is super cheap so that's why a lot of backyard Rams tend to go with it I wanted to do something different though and Cory and I were toying with the idea of doing the entire ramp with ramp armor if you're familiar with skate light it's very very similar I've just heard that ramp armor lasts better in Florida it's basically like a plywood resin plastic thing that's honestly indestructible that's what I used for my quarter pipe and my driveway and I love it it's so smooth but it's ridiculously expensive I think the price on it is almost like $150 a sheet that's a lot of money in order to do a full ramp armor surface I had to about double my budget but here's the way I look at it if I spend the money on the ramp armor it's going to protect that ramp as an investment and if we do move we can move all the ramps and all the wood will almost be as good as new it's going to sound ridiculous to you guys but I can't see us living here for more than a couple more years we're like right on top of a main road I want more privacy Nicole wants more privacy it would be nice to have a bigger yard where we can do more things I don't know like dirt bikes and stuff and of course you know I always want a bigger garage but I didn't want to get trapped in that rental mindset where you don't really do anything to your house because you know that you're going to leave eventually we're doing what we want with the house and although it's quite costing we may never get that money back if it's fun it's exciting it's videos and who knows we might live here longer than we think so ramp armor it is for the first stage of design I told Cory what I wanted to have in the ramp in my backyard there basically three things that I wanted one of them was a fun box jump not super big but not super small just enough to kind of float and do some tricks over number two was a pyramid I love like pyramid Bank hips I love doing tricks on them they're kind of chill and fun to mess around on and three was just like a nice quarter hip I just love like Moto whipping and doing tables and stuff over hips I told him I wanted more of a flowy backyard because although I'm way better at riding Street than Park I have way more fun riding part cuz it's chill it's flowy I get to go high and fast and I want just a chill fun place for people to come over hang out ride I don't know so he played around made the first draft of the design and my mind was blown I didn't realize we had that much space in the backyard and we could fit that much stuff there were a couple problems though I don't really care for spines and I hate narrow box jumps so I came up with the idea of getting rid of the spine and making the box jump wider but then on the ramp you have just like this big side of the box jump sticking out and in your way so I thought why don't we make a transition on the side of the box jump and that can be like another hip that was easy to change and it allowed us to make the whole ramp a little bit narrower and save money in all that ramp armor the next thing was the fun box I wanted to make that a little bit wider because I like to be able to do like manual 360s and nose manual 360s and all that stuff and it looked a little bit narrow to be able to fit that in so we widened that out too and now we have this cool little section between the box jump side and the pyramids you can kind of use that to just mess around but the biggest problem I saw was the aesthetic appeal of the ramp with this ramp I want to be able to open up the slider door walk outside and just be like bam look at it but the way that the ramp was designed you walk outside and you see the back of a giant quarter and you have to like walk around it to get inside the ramp so the challenge was finding a way to open up that section of the ramp so you could walk outside see everything without ruining the flow we were able to open that section up by putting two 5T quarter hips in place of that one long quarter on the back which honestly I think would be more funz cuz I added two more hips and it'll honestly be kind of like a circular flow to the park but I was worried that after that box jump you're going to have too much speed and you know if you're not comfortable hitting the hip you'll have to just freaking roast it and die so I came with the idea of putting an extension and now in the picture it isn't totally final because we might widen it a little bit so the extension can be farther away from the hip and it won't interfere but then you have the option of hitting the extension and then the Box backwards instead of having to do the hip the new box jump looks so good that side looks super fun and so you know the box jump we were planning on doing I believe a five foot lip and a 6ft Landing the reason we're doing that is so you can have a roller Landing if you've ever ridden a park that has a roller landing and it's the same height as the lip you actually have to over clear the box for it not to feel like you're casing and that's just sketchy and not fun but this looks perfect the best part is since this Ram so much smaller we have room for almost like another channel of expansion on the side next to the fence and towards the front of the house by the patio I have some crazy ideas for that stuff but that'll probably be another phase down the road maybe even next year just to keep things interesting after we got the design all set my next step was to go and talk to the neighbors and make sure that it's cool although it's not really on their property and we don't have homeowners association it's just kind of a courtesy to talk to the neighbors and make sure that they don't mind something of that nature that's going to be so close to them my ROM in Connecticut I had issues cuz I had some like old neighbors that just caused nothing but problems they would call the cops on us they were Building without a permit and just give us a hard time for lots of stupid stuff and the good thing is our neighbors were super cool with it what I'm working on with the ramp now is figuring out what I'm going to do for fencing because I want the entire back area of our yard enclosed and I've also been doing research into security cameras and ways that I can keep people out of the backyard because it's going to be a huge liability having that ramp there and we're going to have to take trespassing extremely seriously so this is what's crazy we are starting construction of the ramp on January 4th that's less than 2 weeks away and they think that the ramp will only take about 14 days to complete in its entirety that means in less than a month we'll be riding like one of the coolest ramps right out there in our back yard no driving no session times no worrying about being kicked out because bikes aren't allowed it worked out well cuz I'm super eager to get this ramp in the backyard before it starts getting hot out and I don't want to ride outside and Cory's super eager to get out of the cold so we're able to do this super quick this short of notice is like unheard of in the ramp building world big projects like this I always talk about it and sometimes it's hard for me to commit and start the process because it is so much work and so many Logistics involved with it but it's begun it's happening and I could not be more excited I think the plans for a truck are going to get placed on for at least a couple weeks maybe a couple months I don't like making a lot of big purchases at once I'd rather take care of 2016 taxes and get a better picture of where we are before I go spend a lot of money on a truck too I'm stoked though this is like a dream come true I can't believe this is happening I 100% could not do it without you guys I hope you're as excited as I am this is going to be so sick and you know I'm going to show as much of the process as I possibly can and try to make interesting videos of the process the first ride all the tricks all the hips gosh it's going to be amazing the ramp does design is pretty locked in because we've already placed the orders for the wood and the ramp armor and everything but if you have any suggestions that you think might be very easy to do feel free to leave them in the comments hit the like button if you're excited for this video and I will see you guys again soon tomorrow's video we are installing the two poost lift in the garage and it got a little interesting have a wonderful Christmas you guys are like family to us and remember sticks and stones may break your bones but sharing this video will never hurt you hethis is big I've been keeping this a secret and I've been so excited to share it with you guys but I wanted to wait for the perfect time to release the news TV shows always do Christmas special so I thought what better time to release this super exciting news than on Christmas day I hope your Christmas is going awesome you guys got all the stuff you wanted and please don't be antisocial in the corner watching this video chances are there's a lot of people that you only get to see this one time of year so make sure you spend some time with them appreciate the people in your life cuz you never know if this could be that very last time you ever see them enough of that though let's get to the exciting stuff anyone else of my again she depends on you she depends on again you the time has finally come and we are building a backyard skate park I think one of the coolest things about our garage project is that you guys have gotten to see everything from the design phase onward and you get to kind of enjoy the progress as it comes to life now although I've been talking about wanting to build a ramp in the backyard since we got this house I've kind of been keeping the progress a secret so for this video I want to bring you guys back through the process and explain everything that I've gone through designing to budget to cost to planning to when it's going to be here here and how fun it's going to be before we even got our first house I knew that I wanted to have a backyard ramp and having a suitable backyard was one of the biggest factors when we were choosing houses this house had a large pretty private and very flat backyard but the issue with Florida is that almost every single house in a nice area has a homeowners association which are like giant no NOS for ramps they tell you what you can and can't do on your property so it was very tough finding a place that did not have home owners Association but we did I probably could build a pretty good setup in the backyard but I have so many projects going on and so little time that I know it would take years for me to even get a setup that actually uses the full backyard and is fun a ramp that I build would probably be a little bit sketchy which can definitely be fun but I wanted a ramp that's perfect everything with this house I've been obsessing over it and I'm just so detail oriented that having a sketchy ramp next to a really sick house just wouldn't mesh up right in my head with some things it's just better to leave it to the professionals I'll get a better ramp I'll get it done faster and it'll probably last way longer there are so many ramp Builders out there some that are super wellknown some that are kind of low-key but still build great ramps a pro BMX rider by the name of Cory rowski started a ramp company called ramped construction I've been paying attention to the ramps that they built on Facebook and what really caught my attention was that their ramps weren't just big hunks of wood they were artistic pieces they had lots of little details and they just looked over the top which which is exactly what I want for our backyard what really sold me though is that Cory and his crew are BMX riders and the last thing I would want to do is have help from a skateboarder design my ramp and then not have transition that would feel good on a bike building a ramp is a lot of work so if you choose the wrong dimensions and you build a box jump that's really hard to clear or is too short or just doesn't feel good that's a lot of wasted time and money so I hit up Cory and we started the process the budget I had come up with for the ramp was $30,000 that may sound like a lot to you but for a ramp that's really not that much just the wood alone cost so much and if you want to have a decent Siz ramp you're going to be spending quite a bit of money at the time I viewed the ramp as a sunk cost basically once it's built it's worth nothing if we ever moved I can't move that big of a ramp so I just figured it's practically garbage but the cool thing is for me with my brand and the YouTube channel I can justify a cost like that as a business investment because if it enables me to ride more produce more content and draw new people to the Channel with this Allure of this awesome skate park in my backyard over a period of time it will in fact pay for it s the situation that I'm in is obviously unique and I'm incredibly grateful for it I'm not bragging I just want to explain to you guys that I don't view this as just throwing money away the next question is surface I actually have a ramp in my backyard in Connecticut and that ramp was made out of pressure treated plywood it's withstood like five winners and we can still ride it but it definitely shows sign of weathering and wear some of the panels are warped it's a little spongy and it's not as smooth as it used to be but pressure treated is super cheap so that's why a lot of backyard Rams tend to go with it I wanted to do something different though and Cory and I were toying with the idea of doing the entire ramp with ramp armor if you're familiar with skate light it's very very similar I've just heard that ramp armor lasts better in Florida it's basically like a plywood resin plastic thing that's honestly indestructible that's what I used for my quarter pipe and my driveway and I love it it's so smooth but it's ridiculously expensive I think the price on it is almost like $150 a sheet that's a lot of money in order to do a full ramp armor surface I had to about double my budget but here's the way I look at it if I spend the money on the ramp armor it's going to protect that ramp as an investment and if we do move we can move all the ramps and all the wood will almost be as good as new it's going to sound ridiculous to you guys but I can't see us living here for more than a couple more years we're like right on top of a main road I want more privacy Nicole wants more privacy it would be nice to have a bigger yard where we can do more things I don't know like dirt bikes and stuff and of course you know I always want a bigger garage but I didn't want to get trapped in that rental mindset where you don't really do anything to your house because you know that you're going to leave eventually we're doing what we want with the house and although it's quite costing we may never get that money back if it's fun it's exciting it's videos and who knows we might live here longer than we think so ramp armor it is for the first stage of design I told Cory what I wanted to have in the ramp in my backyard there basically three things that I wanted one of them was a fun box jump not super big but not super small just enough to kind of float and do some tricks over number two was a pyramid I love like pyramid Bank hips I love doing tricks on them they're kind of chill and fun to mess around on and three was just like a nice quarter hip I just love like Moto whipping and doing tables and stuff over hips I told him I wanted more of a flowy backyard because although I'm way better at riding Street than Park I have way more fun riding part cuz it's chill it's flowy I get to go high and fast and I want just a chill fun place for people to come over hang out ride I don't know so he played around made the first draft of the design and my mind was blown I didn't realize we had that much space in the backyard and we could fit that much stuff there were a couple problems though I don't really care for spines and I hate narrow box jumps so I came up with the idea of getting rid of the spine and making the box jump wider but then on the ramp you have just like this big side of the box jump sticking out and in your way so I thought why don't we make a transition on the side of the box jump and that can be like another hip that was easy to change and it allowed us to make the whole ramp a little bit narrower and save money in all that ramp armor the next thing was the fun box I wanted to make that a little bit wider because I like to be able to do like manual 360s and nose manual 360s and all that stuff and it looked a little bit narrow to be able to fit that in so we widened that out too and now we have this cool little section between the box jump side and the pyramids you can kind of use that to just mess around but the biggest problem I saw was the aesthetic appeal of the ramp with this ramp I want to be able to open up the slider door walk outside and just be like bam look at it but the way that the ramp was designed you walk outside and you see the back of a giant quarter and you have to like walk around it to get inside the ramp so the challenge was finding a way to open up that section of the ramp so you could walk outside see everything without ruining the flow we were able to open that section up by putting two 5T quarter hips in place of that one long quarter on the back which honestly I think would be more funz cuz I added two more hips and it'll honestly be kind of like a circular flow to the park but I was worried that after that box jump you're going to have too much speed and you know if you're not comfortable hitting the hip you'll have to just freaking roast it and die so I came with the idea of putting an extension and now in the picture it isn't totally final because we might widen it a little bit so the extension can be farther away from the hip and it won't interfere but then you have the option of hitting the extension and then the Box backwards instead of having to do the hip the new box jump looks so good that side looks super fun and so you know the box jump we were planning on doing I believe a five foot lip and a 6ft Landing the reason we're doing that is so you can have a roller Landing if you've ever ridden a park that has a roller landing and it's the same height as the lip you actually have to over clear the box for it not to feel like you're casing and that's just sketchy and not fun but this looks perfect the best part is since this Ram so much smaller we have room for almost like another channel of expansion on the side next to the fence and towards the front of the house by the patio I have some crazy ideas for that stuff but that'll probably be another phase down the road maybe even next year just to keep things interesting after we got the design all set my next step was to go and talk to the neighbors and make sure that it's cool although it's not really on their property and we don't have homeowners association it's just kind of a courtesy to talk to the neighbors and make sure that they don't mind something of that nature that's going to be so close to them my ROM in Connecticut I had issues cuz I had some like old neighbors that just caused nothing but problems they would call the cops on us they were Building without a permit and just give us a hard time for lots of stupid stuff and the good thing is our neighbors were super cool with it what I'm working on with the ramp now is figuring out what I'm going to do for fencing because I want the entire back area of our yard enclosed and I've also been doing research into security cameras and ways that I can keep people out of the backyard because it's going to be a huge liability having that ramp there and we're going to have to take trespassing extremely seriously so this is what's crazy we are starting construction of the ramp on January 4th that's less than 2 weeks away and they think that the ramp will only take about 14 days to complete in its entirety that means in less than a month we'll be riding like one of the coolest ramps right out there in our back yard no driving no session times no worrying about being kicked out because bikes aren't allowed it worked out well cuz I'm super eager to get this ramp in the backyard before it starts getting hot out and I don't want to ride outside and Cory's super eager to get out of the cold so we're able to do this super quick this short of notice is like unheard of in the ramp building world big projects like this I always talk about it and sometimes it's hard for me to commit and start the process because it is so much work and so many Logistics involved with it but it's begun it's happening and I could not be more excited I think the plans for a truck are going to get placed on for at least a couple weeks maybe a couple months I don't like making a lot of big purchases at once I'd rather take care of 2016 taxes and get a better picture of where we are before I go spend a lot of money on a truck too I'm stoked though this is like a dream come true I can't believe this is happening I 100% could not do it without you guys I hope you're as excited as I am this is going to be so sick and you know I'm going to show as much of the process as I possibly can and try to make interesting videos of the process the first ride all the tricks all the hips gosh it's going to be amazing the ramp does design is pretty locked in because we've already placed the orders for the wood and the ramp armor and everything but if you have any suggestions that you think might be very easy to do feel free to leave them in the comments hit the like button if you're excited for this video and I will see you guys again soon tomorrow's video we are installing the two poost lift in the garage and it got a little interesting have a wonderful Christmas you guys are like family to us and remember sticks and stones may break your bones but sharing this video will never hurt you he\n"