oh my…it’s a doozie of an update.
It’s rare in our house, well at least for me, that something bothers me so much that I just have to have it changed. For my husband, on the other hand, when something begins to bother him, It must get done now.
WE ARE FINISHING OUR HOUSE! (haha, not everything!)
Just the outside! This summer we are planning on finishing our exterior project which means replacing all of the remaining original windows, siding, trim and front door. Our project list is beyond long and our summer will probably speed on by as we await our new exterior and a new baby.
My husband asked me, “New van or windows?” It wasn’t even hard. Windows. Having new windows in the living room and kitchen has made such a difference, not only for their newness but also for the beefier trim and coat of paint surrounding them. While our baseboards and doors throughout will stay put until it’s time to do the floors, our windows will look amazing. I really can’t wait!
Last year we met with a Landscape Designer from Southview Design, mainly to achieve some direction in what to do with our mess of a yard. When we bought our house, renters had been living in it for years. Basically they did not lift a finger to do any yard work. As a result our yard was in a less than desirable state. Our goal with our landscape designer was to come up with a plan that we could implement with a little help from them. We are pretty much novices when it comes to gardening and plants, so having some input was really helpful.
Here’s part of the plan they came up with for our backyard:
After thinking through our plans for the summer we decided to add and subtract a few things. We’d like to have our house re-appraised this fall so we are attempting to have the exterior looking a little more manicured.
Goals:
-Create beds in the back, assemble a berm along our fence line to deal with water issues, install our arbor from our wedding, and add plants/beds to the front of our house. The back is waiting for next year!
After thinking through our yard a bit more and making room for a play set (coming next year hopefully) we tweaked the plan to look a bit more like this:
We’ve been thinking over how to deal with the play set and what material goes underneath. We’d like to use mulch in the back bed and my initial thought was to match the color and switch to rubber mulch under the play set. We will see what our professional says about that! We are meeting with our landscape designer to tweak the new plan a bit more, his name is Bob Renaud and he’s now with Minnesota Green. He’s been fantastic!
We went to the nursery on Sunday after brunch and it’s overwhelming to say the least. We have a long list of plants we really like, especially flowering plants like peonies, and so we’ll go armed with our favorites inspired by the Landscape Arboretum and the nursery. Hopefully Bob will be able to add a few of them to the plan!
Needless to say this summer is chock full of work. We’ve been out playing in the dirt and pulling up weeds/trees/bushes everyday for the past week. Multiple hours a day. We were very excited for a rainy day to give us a break. Alex just planned out all the projects on our list and came up with work plan. From now until September we will be spending approximately 10-12 hours a week working in our yard. At least I’ll stay strong for labor:)
Wish us luck…since we’ve slotted this as our “forever house” as the Lord sees fit, every change we make helps this house feel even more like ours. All the sweat equity so far has been worth it!
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