Gettin' the Itch

We have vacation coming up in May and are getting SO excited to start working on the landscaping outside! The hubs and I were talking about it today on how cooped up we have been and haven't spent any time outside....We have some background in landscaping so this is the kind of stuff that the hubs and I LOVE doing!!

When we first bought our house our yard didn't have really anything going on....was really plain Jane so the hubs edged out along the fence line and added some mulch, and a few pots with flowers which made a huge difference in the yard!

Last summer we added some plants to pretty up the yard with some planter boxes on the front of the house and replaced the Mississippi stone with mulch which gives it a much warmer look...but this year we have some major places to spruce up the yard!

We also plan on renting a sod cutter and adding some more dimension to the left side of the picture with landscape brick, stone and some mulch....These plans have been in the works for a while now, but just having the weather warm enough has been the issue!



I've wanted to have a pergola in our yard for a while now.  The hubs and I contemplated building our own but when we ran across this one at Home Depot we decided to go with this one!



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The pergola is going in front of our garage on top of a paver brick patio that we will be doing ourselves!  My mom and BD have some extra pavers that they aren't going to use so the hubs and I are snatching those up to use for the patio area.

I also want to put a planter box under the window for the garage alone with some black shutters.  Unfortunately we can't find any that will match up with the ones we have on the house because the windows dimensions are too small, but I think the hubs will be able to come up with something!

We also have an issue with our fire pit....  It looks terrible!  We've talked about redoing the fire pit but have put it off because well it still did the job, but now since we're going to be redoing the yard this pups part of the project to!

 I would really like to build an underground fire pit like this:


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or maybe something like this:


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We also want to construct a screen for the air conditioner like this:

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We think that a screen would hide the eye sore and with some lush ground cover would really make that corner of the yard a little more inviting!

We usually stay on top of fertilizing and aerating our yard, but last summer we were working on the kitchen project so that took all of our focus away from the yard.  You also add two dogs who regularly use the yard and that is a recipe for how our yard looks right now, like a disaster!

p.s: The hubs managed to get a little tiling done in the bathroom.... we're due to have an off day together soon so we should be finishing up the tiling and grouting and a post will follow!!  There is actually an end in site and words cannot describe how happy we are with how this project is turning out!