I will never forget the day we first toured this house. We were so excited to see this house as it was in our “dream neighborhood”. It was a beautiful crisp autumn day. The trees lining the street to our house were every shade of orange, red, and yellow. The house next door had kids jumping in piles of leaves. The sun was shining.
When we first walked into the house, we knew we liked it, but after living in a two bedroom condo for the last few years a large backyard was a big priority for us. We saw the living room and the kitchen, but immediately asked our realtor if we could see the backyard. They opened the patio doors and the boys ran out into the sunshine in the backyard, and started kicking around a soccer ball they had brought. They were in love.
After looking at the rest of the house. So were Brian and I.
The backyard (as well as other landscaped areas of surrounding our house) has undergone some huge transformations since we have moved in two years ago.
When we moved in, we really like the brick paver patio, however there was a huge above ground pool with a rickety deck. Also, there were some trees and shrubs, but there were definitely some areas that were overgrown and needed some TLC.
Brian and I decided to just tackle the yard a little bit at a time.
The first order of business was to remove the pool and deck. Neither were kept up very well, and were not safe. So, Brian tore down the deck and pool.
Next, we had some landscapers come and remove any dead overgrowth as well as sod the area where the pool used to be. They added a little mulch area to add some plants.
Finally, Brian and I also built two raised beds for our vegetable garden. You can read more about how we built them HERE.
We were happy that the pool was gone and that there was plenty of room for the kids to run around, but the yard seemed unfinished.
This year, we decided to add a little more dimension to the backyard and asked landscapers to come back this spring to add some bullet edging and mulch to the entire perimeter of the backyard. Also, they removed some other dead bushes and trees, and added a few other elements such as a two more crab apple trees.
Also, on the side of the house was a huge island that was filled with nothing but some dead bushes and overgrowth.
The landscapers removed everything that was dead, kept the nice flowering tree, and surrounded that area with rocks and bullet edging that is consistent with the landscaping in the front of the house.
There are some other things in years to come that we would like to do, but for now we are happy that we have wide open spaces, a healthy lawn, and some mulched areas to add some flowers.
We’ve come a long way from this:
To this:
I think this weekend, we will celebrate with some s’mores in the fire pit!
6 comments
Congrats on your new space – it looks great! 🙂 Love the size of your yard – What a great place for the kiddos to run around!
So far we've had lots of running races!
Your yard looks great said the woman who lives in a condo and never has to do yard work.
That is how we were for so long. Apparently we've made up for lost time.
It looks great!!! Raised gardens are on my list for this summer 🙂 Keep us updated on your garden!
Thank you so much! Good luck with your raised gardens! So far our veggies are sprouting, I will do an update soon!
Take care,
Erin