(The deceiving picture from the online listing that I mentioned earlier.)
This is what we saw in our walk-through:
This is what we were working with come spring/summer:
Overgrown shrubs, dead grass, a sad faded yellow paint color, and a floral mailbox. It was depressing. But now, not so much. :)
Please ignore the big blue tub. It houses all the river rock that I'm still pulling up and eventually delivering to my friend's fire pit. There is still a lot to do: scrape and paint trim, fill in the bare areas, finish transplanting the rest of the hosta to the side of the house, new edging... The list is never-ending.
As an overeager homeowner, I:
1. Painted. Yep, the ENTIRE house, by MYSELF. Olympic's Stone Grey for the house color and Phantom Mist for the shutters. It looks black on the paint chip but is a wonderfully rich espresso brown. All for about $150. Yes, you heard that right. $150!
2. Ripped out the shrubs. With the help of a generous friend. Who am I kidding? I didn't "help"at at. She was wielding that ax just fine. If it was left for me to do, those shrubs might still be there today. (I'm paying her back in the form of river rock.)
3. Dug up a ton, literally, of river rock. Replaced with black mulch.
4. Slowly added new plants. Last summer, I was about 25%.
I think I'm about 50% this summer. Hopefully next year, I'll find exactly what I need to fill in the rest of the area.
5. Decorated with some hanging baskets. My $5 Boston ferns and $5 hanging baskets from WalMart. $40 for all of this. Can you believe it?
Another quick before and after:
6. My favorite part was fixing that grass for under a hundred bucks. 57 bags of top soil, fertilizer, and a bag of grass seed later:
7. I was glad once we got rid of the ugly mailbox. We had a little giggle when Matt pulled it out of the ground. We replaced it with a basic black house-mounted one. (One that I hung a bit too tall. I don't think my mail carrier can close it. I didn't think about the fact not everyone is 5'9". lol)
8. You can't see the house numbers because I removed them from the pics, but they are of the floating numbers sort. Similar to:
I think that's about it. lol This totally inspired me to break out the "listing" pics of the house and compare them to the "now" pics. Look for more blog posts to come!
10 comments:
It looks gorgeous!!! Love the transformation.
This all looks great! We're tackling both our front and back yards (slowly) as well...and I have to say, the worst part has been the tilling.
Fantastic transformation!
That looks AWESOME. I love the color you chose. I'm totally impressed... that is a TON of work.
keep up the great post!! I am so impressedby your work...your husband must be sooo proud of you!!!
Amazing transformation! I cannot believe you painted it by yourself! Oy, my back hurts just thinking about it. Fabulous work, my friend. It's just like a chic modern cottage now!!
Wow, nice work! Love the new paint color.
fantastic! great transformation. Can you share what exactly you did with your lawn?
-Joy
Joy, we first removed the top layer of dead grass and roots with a shovel and then raked the soil to loosen it up. Then we picked up a bunch of top soil at WalMart (about $1/bag) and leveled it out. Threw some grass seed on top and watered the heck out of it. The nursery specialist said it would take a full year before it would be completely grown in. (It was THAT bad.)
We bought (what I thought was) high quality grass seed. But there were weeds EVERYWHERE. I was told it was most likely in the top soil.
I pulled the weeds by hand and then did the Scott's 4 step program this year. It made a dramatic difference throughout this summer.
Thanks for the info. I'm trying to save my yard on a budget too. But I'm in San Diego so maybe I should wait until mid-Fall to try and seed my lawn. Wish me luck, cuz I sure need it :) - Joy
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