Inside Out

I have super exciting news that I truly did not realize I would be so thrilled to share!

Drumroll please....

WE HAVE GRASS!!!

Since the day we moved in our yard has been 95% run-of-the-mill weeds, 4% weeds that flower (hello, Florida snow), and 1% terrifyingly spiky, awful weeds I was too scared to pull. Not a blade of grass in sight. In addition to the weeds, there were plenty of bare patches.

We knew the sprinkler system wasn't working when we bought the house, and we knew we'd have to eventually fix it, but there was no point in watering our weeds. This actually worked out in our favor, we have lived here over 6 months and mowed... three times?

We've done a smidge of work outside on the house, like pulling out some bushes (that was a fun adventure), then having someone more qualified take out some more bushes and trim the trees. I've also used probably 5-6 gallons of weed killer in the flower beds, and pulled countless weeds by hand, but it all sort of came to a head last week. It's come to my attention that we are about the 3rd worst looking house on the street (in my opinion), and the worst house is currently being completely renovated, so we will soon move to the #2 spot. Not a great feeling.

Plus, we are doing so much work inside that I just hate that the neighbors drive by and see very little progress on the outside (and they constantly have to look at our messy garage). So, we made a decision to get a quote for sod and new rock/shell over the current flower beds. That quote turned into work being done this week! Yay!

Before I get to the photos (you poor, sweet souls are the best for reading this far!), I do need to say that it's not done (nothing is done, let's be real), we have dreams (big ones!) and they'll come to fruition eventually.

Here are the before photos:

And a close up of the weeds in case you were fooled by the green-ish colors:

Before it could get Better it got worse, much worse. They sprayed the lawn with grass (weed) killer to remove the ground cover that was there for a clean surface for the sod. It took a couple days, but everything turned perfectly brown.

We had a big "bed" in the front with some palm trees that, while we loved them, the landscaper said they were past their prime and should be removed. So out they came. We removed the bump-out to the right of the house where there used to be scraggly bushes, but we removed them so we could pull the boat trailer to the side of the house. We also pulled any plants that weren't in good shape. Truthfully, we aren't left with much, but that will change!

There was a crew of 6 people and it took about 2.5 days of hard work for them to tear up all the dead lawn, remove the trees, fill the beds with shell, move the bricks to the new alignment of the beds, pull plants, fix the sprinkler system (it's wifi now), lay sod, and plant 6 new clusia plants by the pool cage.

I said to Scott at one point "I thought we'd just lay the sod ourselves". Let's all take a moment and laugh at my naiveté as you scroll through the photos and see the literal pallets of sod that were brought in by a semi-trailer.

Originally we priced out getting new plants brought in, and it would've been gorgeous, and done like right now, but it's was priceyyyyyyy. So, we had the heavy lifting done for us and decided we'll do the rest ourselves.

We started with 3 hibiscus bushes for by the pool cage and two irises by the arches in the front walk way. The irises will get yellow flowers and will continue to grow like a flat fan.

Two plants that made the cut after the removal process were the yellow Allamandas (trumpet flowers) under the picture window. After one night of some sprinkler action they bloomed this morning!

Here's the whole "after" of the front yard:

So fresh and so clean, clean!

Without the palms in the front it looks super bare, but HUGE! I have so many ideas for ALL of the plants!

We do still have the super tall palms out front, they'll stay.

Here's the view from the picture window out over the yard:

Hello, Allamanda!

It'll be super fun to pick out the plants as we now have SO MUCH SPACE!

We would like some fruit trees, thinking mango or avocado as they stay small. Scott wants a bottle palm (so little and squatty and cute!). I would also like some sort of flowering tree by the corner of the house. The world (well, our yard) is our oyster!

In all the crazy goodness that was the yard progress, we also managed to finish prepping the second guestroom. We filled and sanded, and filled some more. We sprayed primer and it's ready for paint.

In between spackle/primer drying we sanded our bed frame that's been patiently waiting in the garage for us. Scott built us this bed frame in Indiana and it's made two moves with us and has seen better days. We thought about staining it, but we've previously filled holes with paint-grade filler and even some caulk, so we'll just sand it all smooth and give it a fresh coat of the same color, in a high-gloss.

We also hung the light in the entry that I've been holding off on. I bought this cool flower light a couple months ago, but we wanted to wait until the dusty stuff in the entry was done to hang it. It's not dust-free yet, but Scott hung it for me anyway.

Finally, we finished our evening with a little trouble-shooting. When Scott tested the wifi sprinklers we found that a flowerbed in the pool cage flooded. Someone is coming tomorrow to look at it, but Scott found the culprit, a random un-capped pipe almost 4 feet in the ground (see Scott's shoulder all the way in the hole).

We aren't sure what the purpose of this pipe ever was, but we are thinking it might be to blame for the damage of the facade on our retaining wall. If so, it would explain so much, and be a huge relief that we know what it is.

For tonight, we just won't turn on that zone, and instead have an old-school sprinkler for that part of the yard. Tomorrow hopefully it'll be repaired and good to go.

This weekend we were really thankful for the sandy, easy-to-dig soil that made planting and finding the pipe so much easier than anticipated.

Next week we will paint the guest room and hopefully prep the floors to get then done before Scott's mom comes for her visit (yay!!). I forsee some more plants in the plan as well :)