To date we've spent all our time on the inside updates and have neglected the outside. The house was vacant for about 6 months before we moved in so the landscaping had seen better days. Then we ignored it for about a year, it was really time to do something serious.
To be honest, we would typically hire out landscapers to fix it up, but since I'm about to take a 6 month leave of absence (with about half unpaid) we thought it would be a good idea to attempt it ourselves. Being 7 1/2 months pregnant and working on landscaping was not the most enjoyable thing I've ever done, but we had Isaac "help" which made it entertaining and a couple weekends later it was done.
Here are a few before pictures. These are actually from when we bought the house (Feb, 2012) and the landscaping looks better here than it did last month (hard to believe anything could look worse... but it did).
In the past month we did the following:
- Replaced all exterior door hardware (handles, locks, hinges) with oil-rubbed bronze
- Replaced all exterior lighting (except for the light on a post in the yard... we have the new one, just need to install it)
- Major trimming of the bushes in front of the house (we bought an electric hedge trimmer just for this... worth every penny)
- Raked up 2 seasons of leaves
- Removed the weird/ugly brick edging around the tree. It didn't match anything else and was half missing. (What were the previous owners thinking?)
- Added several bags of new soil to build up the bed
- Planted a variety of new azalea bushes and other varieties of annuals and perennials
- Relocated 1 azalea and a few smaller plants from the backyard to the front
- Planted seeds in 2 pots for the front porch
- Mulched
Whew. I'm exhausted just writing that. Here is the end result. Major improvement, don't you think?
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