18+ months
After two days worth of work, I wanted to post about our progress on the front yard remodel.
A reminder that this is what we started with.
First thing we did in the left landscaping bed was regrade the whole area and destroy the current dead plants. The low spot was all around the foundation and as I mentioned in the previous post, we don't want water to pool there around the house. We had to build that area up just a bit to get it to slope towards the drain that Joe installed. We wanted the low spot to be around that drain so we sloped the entire bed flow more towards the south end of the house. Next, Joe dug a trench around the edge of the sidewalk to create a pocket for the rock that we would be adding.
While he was doing that, I was digging my own trench along the right landscaping bed to install the edging stones. We didn't think much of what shape we wanted to go with the edgers because we knew we had to follow along the new drainage pipe. This basically decided the shape for us. I'm more of a clean, straight lines person but doing a 90deg angle would have run into the new piping so it wasn't an option. Whatever. Anything was better than what it was.
Once I finished, we added sand to have something to shape the stone into and Joe got to laying the edgers. It was relatively quick even though Joe had to use his level to check each piece as he installed it.
This is the best "before" picture I have of this side of the yard. You might notice that the yard starts to slope down. This meant that we had to start stacking the edgers to make a bit of retaining wall so the pieces would line up flatly next to each other. A little extra work but total project took only about 30 minutes.
And here is a "progress" picture after the edgers are complete. We still have a mess on our hands but the left hand side is evenly graded and you can just make out the completed edging on the right hand side. The bucket of leaves is about 10 tulips ready to be transplanted.
Next up (and you can see in the previous picture), Joe dug up the two little trees that were on the left side to move to the blank space on the right. I liked the idea of more height filling in on the right hand side and this allowed us to start clean on the left landscaping bed. By this point, nap time was over so we had a fun helper who got into everything.
Then, we laid the plastic on the left landscaping bed and covered it with what rock we did have. The remaining rock is coming in a few days (and probably by the time you are reading this, it will already be done). So onto the completion pictures at this point…
The right landscaping bed which has two new trees. These bloom in the spring, have green leaves in the summer and turn red in the fall. They will fill out a bit more once they add their leaves. We still need to trim the big bush, grade the soil a bit more, lay the plastic and rock and seed the dirt spots where we installed the drainage.
Our only working water spout is currently right here so we need to come up with some sort of camouflage for our hose. It will not be staying here. We'll also be putting a planter box under the window for the tulips we dug up.
And onto the left landscaping bed. Like I mentioned, we just need to add the rest of the rock here. For now, we are keeping it strictly rock. Plants are eventually in the plans (something low lying and low maintenance but we'll see when we get to that).
Our last accomplished task this weekend was painting the side window of the front door. No big explanation but it was in serious need of a touch up. Started off white, ends black.
I screwed up on the before picture of the front door so here is a cropped example. You can also see that we replaced the light (we did that and the two on the front of the house back in the fall?)
The storm door, as well as the front door behind it, are getting an apple green color. The shutters are being replaced with new black vinyl ones. We are also moving the house numbers up by the front door as opposed to them being on the brick by the garage. They will be much easier to see against the siding. And hopefully also balance out the unevenness of the light so close to the shutters (this drives me nuts!).
We'll end here with a...
Before:
In Progress:
And our updated To-do list. We'll see how the weather holds up on letting us get more stuff done but hopefully I'll have some more updates for you after another week.
Remove dead plants….CHECK
Regrade slope of landscaping beds to drain correctly….CHECK
Add edging pavers on right landscaping bed….CHECK
Trim big bush in right landscaping bed
Transplant 2 bushes in back of left bed to the right bed…..CHECK
Transplant tulip bulbs for planter boxes…..half CHECK
Lay plastic down in both beds…..half CHECK
Cover with rock
Paint garage door black
Wrap garage door trim with aluminum (same as siding color)
New black shutters
Paint front door window inset black….CHECK
Paint front door and storm door apple green
New door numbers by front door
Buy/Build planter boxes for flowers
Seed yard
