Tag: landscaping

Home Improvement

The lamppost from hell

Jessica Smith

Our lamppost has been crooked since day one of moving into our house. Well, I’ve been on a mission this spring and summer to beautify the outside of our home. Landscaping, shutters, new doors, painted driveway, new mailbox, tree removal, new lattice for the garbage, redoing the rocks alongside the driveway… you name it, we’ve tackled it. My dad even removed the well from our front yard because he’s awesome.

He even took pictures for me to put on my blog.

RemovingFrontPipe1

RemovingFrontPipe4

With the biggest eyesore of our front yard removed, we pretty much had no choice but to tackle the crooked lamppost.

It also helped that while we were on vacation by dad cleared out a spot for plants and bought a few stones to circle the post. He basically forced us into it haha.

See how much it leans? Bad news bears.

Lamp Post1

So this lamppost was the post from hell. Originally, I bought a new post to replace it all together. Then my dad suggested I simple paint the current post in the ground. So I tried that.

Lamp Post3

Many coats of black spray paint later, and it wasn’t looking to bad.

Lamp Post2

Then came time to replace the fixture at the top, which I guess we didn’t have to do…. except that when we took it off we realized it was disgusting and broken.

The fixture came off the post just fine, but the ring and the screws holding the fixture to the post wouldn’t budge. At all. I tried every trick in the book to remove those screws, from WD-40 to putting a rubber band in the groove of the screw and turning it that way. Nothing worked. So I got fed up and started to tear the metal off the post. We were going to replace that part anyway, so what did it matter?

Well, here’s a fun fact. Hammering a screw driver into metal creates a lot of sharp metal pieces. And yes, I did manage to cut my hand. And yes, I did (eventually) get a tetanus shot for the cut. And yes, the place where I got my shot it still swollen because I’m a hot mess.

See why it is the lamppost from hell yet?

If you weren’t convinced, after all of my hard work on the darn pole, I got fed up and pulled it out of the ground. I ended up trekking back to Home Depot (that’s really melodramatic since Home Depot is less than 10 minutes away… not too much of a trek) to buy and even nicer lamppost than the first one I bought. I’m talking about a built-in light sensor and an outlet. Hot damn!

Hours later, my husband and I (mainly Brian — I was so proud of him!) managed to properly wire up the new post. I don’t think I’ve ever shouted so loudly with glee over a darn light working, but we were both really shocked and really excited that it worked.

Now our post isn’t crooked (we still need to cement it in place), it has a light sensor so it turns on automatically, and it is beautifully landscaped šŸ™‚ Total win.

Lamp Post Finished

That lamppost ain’t got nothing on us.

And it looks nice, too!

Garden, Uncategorized

My dad, my landscaping hero

Jessica Smith

My dad is my hero. Not because of the sweet things he does for me and Brian, but because he’s an all-around wonderful person.

This weekend when Brian and I went to the beach with our friends, my dad also became my landscaping hero (as if he wasn’t already).

I knew he wanted to reapply black top to our driveway, so while we were away he came over and transformed our driveway.

This photo does not do our driveway justice. It is looking fly! Also, notice the rocks alongside of the driveway!? They are finished, too. Only took a few months and us paying someone to finish it. Oh well.

New Driveway

That would have been awesome in itself, but he didn’t stop there. He also removed our old well poll from the front yard, which I can’t even begin to describe how amazing it is.

Old well

But wait, there is more! He planted begonias in our landscaping and put out American flags around our house!

American Flags

Bogonias

Isn’t he just awesome!? It was so nice to come home and be proud of the way my house looks, and my dad has been instrumental in making our house look great.

While I’m talking about the outside of my house, here are some pretty pictures of plants around the yard:

Black Eyed Susan
 Purple Cone Flower

Speedwell butterfly

Speedwell

And here are my dead stumps!

Dead stump

Dead stump2

Tonight we are tackling the lamp post. I’d bought a new post altogether (even though I told dad I should just spray paint the old one), but I’m going to return it. I spray painted the old one with black paint to make it look just like new. OK, it doesn’t really look like new up close, but who really examines a lamp post closely?

Lamp post prep

Here’s a shot of my house as a whole.

House exterior

A HUGE thank you to my dad for all of the help and positive encouragement he’s given us to tackle the landscaping at our first home. It’s been a ton of work, but I am really proud of how far we’ve come.

Garden

So much landscaping

Jessica Smith

Saturday was a day filled with dirt, dirt, dirt and more dirt. With the awesome help of my dad (he did most of the work), the hubby and I spent all day Saturday landscaping the front of our house. The weather was fantastic — not too hot, a little muggy, and it even rained to cool us off! Thank goodness it wasn’t too hot.

We started bright and early at 8 a.m. and finished mid-afternoon at 3:30 p.m. Then, I went to bed at 8 p.m. because I was too tired to do much of anything else.

It. Was. Exhausting.

But it was all worth it.

Here’s our house before the landscaping overhaul:

These are the goodies we planted:

And, on top of what we bought at Home Depot, we were able to replant the bushes from one side of the house in another location! Because of that, we took out the rose bushes and moves the spaced out bushes on the right side of the house to the left side of the house. We planted them way better than they were before — you’d never know they are the same plants!

After hours of intense manual labor, here’s how the house turned out!

So much nicer than before and so much more well thought out. The black mulch also makes a world of difference!

I love the new plants, especially my liriopeĀ and speedwell (thanks, Ann!).

Once all of the excess dirt washes away the whole front of the house will look even better…. Now, we just need some shutters :p

So pretty. It’s nice that you can actually see our house, now that the rose bushes are gone. Our bay window lets in a lot more light now and looks even bigger than before. I’m really glad we put in all of the hard work to make the front of the house look as nice as the inside.

Happy Monday!