House Remodel 2013 (The Front Yard)

Each year since we've been in our house we have tackled a major remodel project.  The first year it was gutting and remodeling the bedrooms.  The second year it was our kitchen and living room redo.  This year we debated about tearing out the bathrooms, but after getting some bids for the work and weighing options, we decided that the front and back yards needed some love more than the bathrooms.  Maybe we will tackle bathrooms next year. 

 

I totally spaced taking "before" photos of our front yard, which is such a bummer because the change is drastic, at least to us.  We muscled out a ton of super-thick concrete scalloped border and reshaped the planter beds to have a much more modern look.  Then we tore out a wall of old bushes/hedges that lined the front of the yard so we could take grass all the way out to the sidewalk.  Paul spent a bunch of weekends installing new sprinklers and pipes and reworking the existing ones to provide water to all the plants and lawn that we were planning to plant.  Then it took a number of trips to the nursery to choose plants and trees.  Figuring out what plants will look good together is tough!  But we do love how everything turned out.  And finally Paul installed exterior lighting, which turned out way more amazing than we could even have hoped. 

 

Clara has loved "helping" while daddy has worked in the front yard.  I have helped where I could but Paul really did the brunt of this project.  My contribution was more on the design side. 

Here is the best (and pretty much only) "before" example I have.  We actually took this crazy bush down within just a few days of buying the house but you can see the cement scallop border and the plain dirt that we have just left alone for three years.  We have also replaced the windows and the door in previous remodel phases.  One of these years we plan to tear off the dumb scalloped gutter trim and replace the gutters and redo (paint? stucco? rock?) the exterior of the house.

 

And here is how our front yard looks now:

 

So much better. 

Here is another angle to show off the shape of the planter beds a little bit better (and all the new grass at the front is sod that Paul laid down where we used to have these huge old grandparent bushes):

Oh, and we LOVE having the blue bench on front so we can sit and enjoy the beautiful evenings and the mood lighting.

Now on to the next project...