A Year in the Making!

So we have been in the house for a year now. The front yard has been in need for all that time. It has been an eye sore on our street for awhile. It was a huge project that took us a LONG time. Little by little, shovel by shovel, back ache by back ache......it is (for the most part) done!

Here is the story of our year long process in pictures.

So this a google earth image I got that was taken some time before we bought the house. It isn't a great picture, but I never took any pictures of what the front looked like when we moved in. You can see from the picture that yard was full of rocks,cactus,bricks,and patches of white rocks.


Here is another one I took when I was trying to sell the cactus...yep someone paid us to take the cactus! But you can see all the white rocks and bricks....


So the first task was removing cactus. Then I started with all the white rocks. Then I pulled up all the brick borders. Then I started raking up all the fill rock. Yep...that was a lot of work. We made many trips to the dump. And when I say "I"...I mean I did most of the prep work. Also note that the side wall was torn down and Chris built an RV gate for the side yard...as you will see in the next couple pictures.


Then our friend Josh came over with his tractor and scooped out a ton of dirt. We must have had 6 trailer loads go out. This was before summer. The project kinda stopped here for a few months while we got past the awful summer heat.. No one wanted to go out in that. So we sat with a dirt front yard for months.



After the summer, Chris put the sprinkler system in. (See the new RV gate)


We filled in the trenches and leveled it.



Before we laid the sod, Chris wanted to fix the driveway that had sunk about 6 inches. So he jack hammered in out and we loaded all the cement in a dump trailer. The poured a new driveway.





Next, we planted a tree.


Then we roto tilled bags of fertilizer and raked and leveled.


Then the day I had waited and worked for finally came!!!




So what is next?? Well, we have LOTS of projects still. The house and trim will be painted. But here is what I will be working on..... these two areas I have big plans for. I have already scooped out the rocks and dirt. I will post pictures when we are done.