I've lived in our house for about 4 years now.  When I moved in the house was never supposed to be a permanent thing, too close to the parental units for ANYONES comfort.  Much to every one's surprise, especially my own, I decided that I liked the house and once I adjusted to my parents being able to see into my backyard during the winter months it was all fine.  Luckily Spencer agreed that he liked the house, and so we decided to make this a long term thing.  For several years I rented rooms in the house to supplement income, which also led to me not wanting to do any real projects on the house, because lets be honest, renters do not generally care for things the same way that the owner does. 

 We have been focusing on the interior of the house for a while now, little things like painting and also the floors etc.  What I have ignored up until yesterday is the yard.  We have a huge front and back yard.  I fear we have been "that" house on the block.  Lots of weeds in the flower beds, our house REALLY needs a new coat of paint etc.   Yesterday we (I really) bit the bullet and went to Home Depot/WalMart and purchased 15 bags of mulch, 7 bags of top soil, and about $60 worth of plants and bushes to make the front of the house look not quite so bad.  We started at 10am, and worked until 7pm.  We hauled, poured, dug and planted until my mom and I were literally hobbling like 90 year old women and covered in blisters. 

I don't have any before pictures of the front of the house, mainly because I'm embarrassed at how it looked!  In the pictures, anything you see that is covered in mulch was covered in weeds.  The red bench was an off white color that looked like it had been primed and then forgotten!  The bench came from another property my parents bought to use as a rental.  I decided the front of the house could use a pop of color to go against all the brown we have there.   The other things that got painted were the window planter boxes.  They were an unfinished wood, and got a healthy coat of white to help them pop against the brown.  Now I know that the front of the house still looks pretty white trash.  As soon as the weather breaks a little bit and we get some less than 90 degree temps the plan is to paint the outside this fall.   

The front of the house was so neglected, we have these viney weeds that pretty much strangle anything else that may want to live around it.  Once we got rid of those little guys we had to fill in the low areas and try to block off this low area at the side of the house that pretty much just hemorrhages soil anytime it rains.  I found some paver stones on the side of the house that worked well, and so we decided to incorporate them into the rest of the front as well to tie it all together. 

The only thing I didn't get to that I really wanted to finish yesterday was staining the Adirondack chair on the porch.  We have another one that we need to put together and until we put the second one together I don't want to take the stickers off the one on the porch (just to be sure that everything comes together correctly).  I did find this stain by Krylon that comes in a spray can! When it is time to get those 2 chairs stained I think it will make the process a lot easier!  Spencer put the other chair away when we got it, and I have no clue where it went!  Since he is away this weekend I will just have to be patient and have him look when he gets back from the bachelor party!

Next weekend the plan is to stain the back deck.....hopefully I can move by then to work on that!