The Front Yard

From day one the front yard has not looked its best. Over grown plants, nasty dried out mulch, and weeds galore. The curb appeal or lack there of was and is a turn off for this house. The day Geoff convinced me to look at this house I was not in any way shape or form impressed with the front yard.

I can honestly say that there is nothing at all that I like about this front yard. My first impression may not have been the best but I knew that this was a great opportunity for us. A small diamond in the rough so to speak. Crappy front yard, (check) crappy flooring throughout the house (check) and ugly ugly paint colors (check). This was the chance to prove to ourselves that we could indeed take on a huge project together and come out better on the other side. A true test to see how well we could work together as a couple to accomplish the home we have always wanted for our first home.

I planned on making our first project for this house the front yard, however the obnoxious paint colors and the fear of baking my skin and getting a horrible sunburn before our wedding changed my mind. Even after the wedding had passed and the paint on the walls had dried the front yard was still the furthest from being on the top priority list. We had planned on making it number one but traveling makes plans change. Why would we want to work on a yard when we are never home to do the up keep in the first place. Now 2 years later it is beginning to creep back up on the priority list, in fact it hit number one when we were home in May.

It's not like we did the whole front yard project in one shot, nope that would be way too much for little ole me. I decided to tackle this beast in steps. That way I can formulate a solid plan for what the final product will look like. Everyone goes through it, throwing out ideas, seeing which stick, seeing which are the most plausible to pull off, and of course how much the final project is going to cost. I feel the last one is the biggest decision maker of them all. How deep are your pockets for each project? How much are you really going to enjoy X if you get exactly what you planned? Is your plan going to bring value not only to your home but also your life? There is so much to think about when making plans for home improvement. It amazes me how many questions there can be for one project. Honestly, it really slows me down, a lot.

With all that said I normally try and tackle as many of the for-sure-no-matter-what projects as I can. With the front yard there are a few that can be tackled with or without a plan. Starting with weed and plant removal.

That is what I started with.

First, I removed the huge overgrown hedge at the front window. So much more work than I ever thought.

I thought that this was going to be an easy job.. honestly look at the size of that hedge! What was I thinking? It seriously took me eleven of those 55 gallon black trash bags plus our city trash can and 5 hours to take it down by myself. The most time consuming part was clean up of course.

At first progress was slow. I didn't know exactly how I was going to tackle this plant and I honestly thought all of the clippings were going to fit nicely into our big city trash can.. Boy was I ever wrong.... There was no way that was all going to fit in the trash can.. Seriously at this point I had already filled it to the top.. So I shut the lid on the trash can and had Geoff grab me a box of trash bags while he was out for lunch.

Thankfully Geoff got me those bags. Not only did I have to deal with the actual hedge clippings but there was also a nice layer under the hedge of dead plant material and dried mulch that I was not expecting to find. That was two bags itself.  As I got further along on my hedge removal journey I found something I was not expecting...

A nice pipe in the middle of it all. I am not even sure what it is for... whatever at least it wasn't a hand or a dead animal! I never realized how big this hedge actually was! It even wrapped around the house. Once I got all the actual green parts of the hedge cut off I realized I was not going to be able to finish this project on my own. Those roots were just too much for me to budge! So in comes Geoff to save the day!

A few hours/days later he had all the roots removed! Yippee! I cannot believe how naive I was thinking that whole thing was going to fit into the trash can... Duh! I dont know I guess I bit off more than I could chew. O well! Honestly though it looks fantastic! I am so pleased with the results of our hard work. So the count right now is Steph and Geoff 2---- Plants 0... mauhahaha!

Doesn't that look so much better?!

What should we tackle next? Removal of more plants? or Removal of nasty mulch? Maybe both? Or maybe just remove it all everything?!?!?!?!..... We will see... 

The Side Yard

Hey everyone we finally had the time to start working on our side yard! Yay for spring and being home for a little while! The wedding of our great friends brought us home in May. It was a not to miss event and we are so happy that we were able to be there and be apart of such an important day. We lucked out being able to get away from work for 2 weeks it was a fantastic little vacation and a great opportunity to do a little house work.

The outside of the house definitely needed some TLC after all the time away and lack of attention it was given by the previous owner and by us of course, it was time to tackle the jobs that we had been putting off. Time to remove some overgrown plants and begin the planning of the backyard spaces.

I started with the space just outside the living room, the side yard and the location of our future patio. We have big plans for this space, a concrete slab for a nice covered patio. This space will be used for outdoor entertaining which of course will include a grill for Geoff.

Before any concrete can be laid lots of things have to be done. All the gravel and plants in the area must be removed and the cinder-block wall must be taken down. We plan on building a new wall with a large gate so we have better access to our backyard, we might even extend the side yard forward just to add a little more room and a place to store our trash can within our yard.

I thought it would be a good idea to see what we started with in the very beginning. Here is a picture of the side yard when we bought the house back in 2009, wow everything looks so dead. Weird. This picture is from the back yard looking toward the front.

We have removed all the flagstones from the path as well as all the lining blocks, all that is left is the gravel and dirt. We left the plants so far because we were unsure of what we wanted to do in this area, we finally have that plan.

The plan is simple, add a concrete covered patio taking up half the side yard and then the other half lay sod for a nice large area of grass. To do this we gotta remove all that lovely gravel and sand. Thats where I started. On the left you can see where all the gravel has been removed, I also started on the sand but didn't get very far. The bar in the middle of the pathway is where the concrete slab is going to end.

After all the hard work and me thinking I had done such a great and fast job, I discovered I had a lot of work to do still. I lifted the weed blocker and discovered they had simply laid the gravel right over a layer of mulch... Lovely... That was definitely not in my plans..

Once I found that lovely layer of mulch I decided that was the end of moving the gravel for now. I decided that the cinder-block wall needed to come down first so we would have an easy way to remove all the mulch and gravel with a wheel barrow. The gravel will be reused in the front yard and the mulch will be promptly placed in a large dumpster. Once we have the wall down and a dumpster in place the project will move quickly I am sure and it will also allow the concrete people easy access.

So the patio project is at a stand still until we are home long enough to accomplish that plan. Which brought me to the next small project. Removal of the over grown Honeysuckle that straddles that cinder-block wall. I figured that the honeysuckle needs to be removed first before the wall can come down so I might as well do that now. Why wait?.. 

I sort of felt bad removing that honey-suckle, but honestly look at it! It is a gnarly mess of overgrown and dying plant. While I was taking it down a cloud of dirt was wafting out. Which reminded me of the character Pig Pen from Charlie Brown. I was covered in dirt when I finished. 

I would say that it took me about an hour to remove the honey-suckle minus the root. I decided that was a job for Geoff and that I had done my fair share of removing that plant. :) I think that it looks so much better already with that plant gone!. See what you can't really tell from this picture is that you look directly at this location from the couch in the living room. It's amazing how much better it looks.

I can honestly say that it was energy well spent! It surely cleans up the space and makes it feel like a much larger area. Next on my plan list for this area..... removal of the wall!