Home Makeover Series: Yard Edition

Hey everyone and happy start of summer! It certainly has felt like summer the past two weeks. One thing I have noticed so far this month is that our new city (two hours south of where we used to be) gets SOOO HOT. It has been accepted as normal if the temperature reaches above 90 every day this week. The random rain showers, followed by immense heat, has made me very thankful that, for the most part, we have already tackled our big yard projects already since moving in! Which leads me to today’s blog post topic;

As I said in my last [post], the yard was pretty overgrown and unkempt when we bought the house. I mean, the fence looked like this;

The house wasn’t visible from the road, since our row of “bushes” -which actually turned out to be trees- had grown about four feet in diameter.

We had super dated bushes hiding surrounding the front and side of the house, and once the trees filled out for the spring/summer, it was nearly impossible to mow under them, as most branches practically touched the ground.

Before we had even closed on the house, we went over to the property to pick up fallen limbs and sticks which had been left on the ground for who knows how long. Imagine our amazement when we had a 4ft high, 8ft long, 4ft wide pile of debris after our labors– before we even cut a bush or limb! Since our new city charges a crazy amount for leaf and stick pick up, we went with our next best option to get rid of our renovation mess and yard cleanup.

Yep. We actually have over-filled TWO of these big fellas so far in our reno!

This is actually our second round of debris- and our second dumpster!

If we weren’t working on the inside of the house, we were sweating outside trying to make our property look lived-in. My husband did an amazing job tearing out those bushes that hid our house while I did the first round of limb cutting.

 

Here is what the house looked like after all that hard work:

MUCH better, if you ask me! Another huge improvement was cutting back and starting to tear out some of those trees in the front of our yard:

What do ya know? We actually can see the road now, and people can see that this house is not actually abandoned. We have big plans for this area, including tearing out more trees, adding mulch, and planting flowers up here, but we are taking baby steps :).

Another improvement to the front of our yard was our mailbox.

We still have a lot of work to do in order for our yard to look pretty and “host a  party” worthy, but I am so proud of the work we have finished so far! Hopefully in the next few weeks I can show our pack patio all finished and ready to host our family or our neighbors for a little backyard picnic. Until then, here is a sneak peak at how the front porch is coming along. I still need to get a mat, some flowers, and update my wreath for the summer, but I love my Dollar Tree red, white, and blue ribbons!

Thanks for reading today! I would love to hear from you! What do you love or hate about yard work and outdoor projects? What have you been working on?