You've Seen the Before, Now for the After

It only took a week to finish our landscaping and new sidewalk, that included no work on Thursday and Sunday and only a couple hours on Saturday. The kids and I were in Ohio, and by the time we got back the sidewalk was almost finished and all that was left of the landscaping was the mulch and the monkey grass.

To go with our home's new face lift, we power-washed the siding. As a side note, we will not wait two years to do that again! I painted the banisters and freshened up our door. It was previously a reddish/orange/brownish-rust color. So I went and bought barn red paint. Yes, I bought a gallon of barn paint for the door. It says, "Come on it, take your shoes off, and kick back and relax a while."

We had the flower beds along the retaining wall removed and new beds added along the porch. Now we have one large bed that swoops out to about the tallest half of the retaining all. It opened up the yard even more. The landscaper even leveled up the yard several feet at one end since.

Here's the new sidewalk. The old one went straight down from the driveway to the porch. It was only two feet from the side of the garage, making that flower bed impossible to do anything with. The small bushes kept growing over onto the sidewalk and the ground cover was getting out of control. Now it is opened up and you can enjoy a winding walk to the porch past delicious smelling roses and the sweet bay magnolias.

We decided to let the yard grow in where that terrible, horrible flower bed used to be. Really, it had potential. I have no idea if it was never finished or if, at one point it had been and half of the contents were removed with the new owners or what. However, the owners that we purchased from were not the gardening type. The bed had been unattended for a year and half while they lived here. Then it was all but abandoned when we bought the home. It was three months of the growing season between when we closed and when we moved in, at that point it was too far gone. The only thing we put back was the Japanese Maple. At least we can mow the weeds now.