Anyway, with the string of nice (but a tad hot) weather, we decided to work a bit on the outside of the house. Seems silly to be doing indoor projects when it's nice and warm out when those can be saved for the cold winter months. We started with the front of the house. It's a bit smaller of an area to work with than the back and also gives that first impression to the house when people walk up.
First up was installing a fence. Since we live just down the block from a school, there are a good number of kids that walk by our house to school every day (well when school is in session). It's pretty common on our block to have a fence in the front of your house. Not because there have been any problems with damage, but just to keep the teenagers off the lawn if they're is a big group walking by. Actually, we had more of an issue with people walking dogs than the kids. But nonetheless, we installed a fence. It also helped with uniformity of the block since we were one of the only houses without one.
We decided to go with a product called WamBam Fencing. It goes in by pounding an anchor rod into the ground and then securing the post and panels on top. No need to dig post holes or pour concrete. Which would allow us to install it by ourselves. Sounds great. Sometimes things are just too good to be true though. While there were no problems with the product, it was our yard that was the problem. About 6 inches into the pounding we hit all sorts of fun stuff: roots, concrete, stone, etc. Basically all sorts of things we couldn't just pound our way through. So much for installing the fence ourselves.
So we brought in our handy dandy contractor. He and his trusty sidekick drilled through the concrete and whatever else so we could slip in the anchors and then build the fence. It took about six hours and six people, but the fence finally went up. Now to just get the backyard fence done...
But that's a story for another day. The following weekend we decided the yard was looking a bit drab. So a plan was hatched on how to give it a bit of a facelift. And off to Home Depot we went. We came home with about 1200lbs of retaining wall block and 900lbs of dirt. And that was just day one. Day two involved another approximately 600lbs of dirt and lots of flowers. Two days worth of work resulted in a new raised garden bed!
Combine that with a new porch platform step, some fresh stain, and a new mailbox, and we think the house now makes a great first impression.
Since the picture above, the new grass has started to come in, the flowers have filled in, we stained the planter box white and planted some rose bushes in it. I would insert a picture, except apparently I never took one and it is currently raining (I really don't like being out in the rain and I don't think my camera or phone would either). Maybe I can remember to take one eventually...
