Yard Crashing

Don't get too excited, we weren't for real yard crashed.  We didn't find Ahmed or Matt at our local home improvement show.  However, my husband does have strict instructions that if he ever sees any of them at the store to bring them home.  He doesn't have to call and ask, just do it.

Anyway, our yard crashing involved my amazing parents showing up with their mad landscaping skills.  And me making about a thousand phone calls to get a dumpster, mulch & gravel delivered, a bobcat, and to get utilities marked so we didn't accidentally hit the water line or something else terrible.  We did almost dig up the phone line even though it was marked because it was only like an inch under ground.  We missed it though.  Whew!

Okay, so here's the thing.  When we bought our house I hated the shrubs.  There was one very dead shrub right in the middle of the front of the house.  It was an eyesore.  We slowly chopped it away.  There was just a little stub left.  I griped about the shrubs all the time.  Absolutely horrible.  And then there was the sidewalk.  The sidewalk was in terrible shape.  I believe our home inspector called it rehab state.  You know that's not good.  It was super crumbled.  And lined with rotting railroad ties.  Classy.  And then there were crumbling steps going down the hill to the back yard.  And more rotting railroad ties and landscape timbers.  It was just all a huge eyesore.  So when I was at my parents house making jam with my mom and she said they wanted to come work on our yard, I was ecstatic.  Even though it wasn't true Yard Crashers, I think we knocked that thing out of the park.

Get ready for some serious Before and After pictures guys.  There aren't a whole lot of actual progress pictures because I was too busy working and sweating my booty off.  It was totally worth it.  I planted things.  And I don't do dirt.  I also dropped a huge piece of concrete on my finger :(    Okay, enough talking, we need pictures.

How our house looked Sunday morning when we started

After some serious work with the  bobcat.  Sidewalk is gone.  Hideous shrub is gone.  There may have been dancing.  

Then came black plastic to keep the weeds out.  And mulch.  Lots of pretty red mulch.

And the finished product.  On the left we planted four burning bushes with three barberries in front.  On the right are four boxwoods.  And in the middle a piece of driftwood we stole from the side flower bed beside the garage.  That was a total off the cuff idea, we decided we needed something to put in that front corner and off the top of my head, I just said, "how bout that driftwood."  And without a second thought, my mom and I hauled it into the wheelbarrow and pulled it around to the flower bed.

Same area, just a different angle.  You can see that sad dead little shrub.

Big empty space.  And my dad working hard.

I can't believe what we ended up with.  Oh man, it's so pretty.

Apparently I failed to take a before picture here.  But you can see what it looked like in the other pictures.  I think even just the bare dirt here looked better.  Also, we found a brick buried in the dirt when we were planting.  Awesome.

Mulch!  We love mulch!

And it's done.  I just love looking at it.  I think I need a nicer hose holder now.  My one wheel roller from Dollar General just isn't cutting it with all the new landscaping.

A close up of our old sidewalk.  That's just terrible.  I can't believe I'm showing you guys.  Bad bad bad.  And not very safe.

The good news is, it's gone forever.  And it's been replaced with this amazing white rock and paver walkway.  We bought those pavers more than a year ago, they've just been stacked up in our driveway in front of the garage.  I think they're so much prettier when serving their intended purpose.

And the stairs down the hill and the crumbling flower beds.  Those things were in bad shape.  The top flower bed wasn't built right so all the lava rock would wash down hill.  The bottom two flower beds were pretty much gone thanks to Rowdy.  And the steps...  Well, you could go up them sort of, but going down them was not really advised.  I was always terrified I would fall on my face.

We used the bobcat to take out part of the stairs.  Most of them were so broken up though that we could just chuck the concrete into the bobcat bucket.  The top flower bed got torn up during concrete removal.  Then we hooked a chain around a tree that kept growing in the flower bed and that pretty much finished destroying the flower bed.

So my dad spent yesterday rebuilding our flower beds.  Log cabin style.  I think they look amazing.  Eventually the frames will get built up a little taller.  The top bed will get some large pots with knockout roses.  And the bare hill will get covered with some nice green groundcover.  What, we're still not sure.  But something soon so that we don't have a landslide.

So, that's why there was no post yesterday.  I was busy crashing my own yard.  I think it was totally worth it.  I can't believe the difference!  It totally changed the look of our house and I am completely in love.  It was definitely lots of hard work but it's so pretty now.  What did you guys do over the weekend?  Anybody have great ground cover that they love and is super easy to plant/take care of?  And do you want to come over and help me plant it?