Much Needed Update (furniture edition)

Oh Yeah babe.

Flowers are a-bloomin!

Forgot the pillows.... :P

Here's the whole set visible

Just to let you guys see the night ambiance...

The firepot is probably my fav.

Close up of the awesome stepping stones!

No more blank wall!!

    Alright!  Well... it's been awhile since I last blogged about the yard and it's progress.  Many of you have seen it already, but for those of you who haven't I thought I'd give you an update.  Thanks to THE Mike Anderson, I now have some patio furniture. (Hell yeah Craigslist! :])  It's a very nice set too and I'm really pleased with it!  Mike was a very nice guy too.  Also, I went out and splurged a little bit on cool stuff like torches and some path lights, and a FIREPOT!  It burns gel, so it's pretty sweet.  I'm not sure if I ever updated about the giant stumps I got for seating around the fire pit, but they are noticeable in a few of these pics.  What else is there?  Oh yea, I just installed the lattice on the wall.  It definitely looks a lot better than a plain white wall.  And there are some vines already growing their way up.
    I've had to do a few complete overhauls on the two garden spaces to get weeds out of 'em, but I think they're pretty set for now... The plants are doing pretty well as you can see from a few of the pictures!  They are no longer little babies.  BUT, I am not done with this project yet!  Oh yes, there will be more to come this summer! Bwahahahaha! *ehm...*

My future plans include:
-Making a lattice structure that covers (and shades) the loveseat.  There is a vine growing next to it that will help cover it very nicely.
-Probably getting an umbrella to help shade the rest of the seats.
-Also, potentially making a nice little garden area along the back fence by clearing out all the junk that is back there now.

I know, you might be thinking... "Logan! What about the pergola??" or... "What about that gazebo idea?"  Nope and Nope.  I have decided to make a SMALL covering.  This way I get the best of both worlds.  A nice firm structure that has the ability of sporting vines.  AND the nice full sun coverage of a canopy.  In this case, an umbrella.  It's genius, I know.  I'm happy about it.  I'll probably start the lattice structure soon, as that vine needs something to cling to quick.  Soooooo, STAY TUNED! :]]

Finished Fire Pit!!!!

Oh yea!  Finished off the fire pit the other day and also got some MASSIVE stumps for sitting, and made a little bench.  All seating options were free, which is the best part of all. :]  I still wouldn't call this entire project "finished" per se, but it's definitely 100% usable now!  I'm still debating on whether or not I want to do like a rock/stone paving all the way around the fire pit...  But for now it'll stay like this and I'll focus on getting some solar powered lights to line the path with and possibly some stepping stones going through the path as well.

Many more things to come! ... But it might be break time before I begin on any of those other projects.  Running low on energy and draining my wallet... :P

HOLY STORM!?

Bracing my babies for the storm.... If we get a tornado I'm gonna be pissed!!

Finished Gardens!!

Hey!  Here are my finished gardens! I'm pretty pleased with them, especially now that they are mulched. :] And mulch will help keep the soil moist and improve the health of my plants!  Now keep in mind that these gardens aren't going to be all that impressive for a while... I'll continue to feed them miracle grow throughout the summer in hopes that they flourish, but hey this is still just a start.  Hopefully if none of them get stomped on or die, it should all grow back even bigger and better next spring!  I'm pretty excited about it! :]

If you liked these blog posts, don't worry!  Because there will still be other work done in my yard and more things to update! Yayyyy! :]

Other things I hope to finish yet:
-Fire Pit!
-Add forms of seating around the fire pit.
-Dig out grass behind these perennials further in my backyard and mulch it.
-Cut down the trees from inside my hedge and trim the hedge.
-Add some solar powered lights to front and backyard gardens, and elsewhere in backyard.
-Put some stepping stones in the walkway between gardens.

Front Gardening

Well this is less climactic than it ought to be.... Here I'm showing what the little garden in my front lawn looks like.  I didn't have "before" pictures, but it was pretty darn ugly before.  I still want to add mulch to it, which will help improve this new look even more.  The plants I put in should get big pink and white flowers on them once they bloom so it should be an attractive yard if I can ever kill the dandelions in the grass!

I did get the larger area garden in the backyard finished today, but unfortunately it was too dark by then and the pictures didn't quite turn out so I'll have to post some tomorrow.  The mulch makes such a big difference in both backyard gardens, although I could use just a little bit more.  So tomorrow hopefully I can just go grab a bag of mulch and fill up the backyard gardens and spread it through this front one shown and will be able to share the final results with everyone!

I might even get the bricks for the fire pit tomorrow and knock it all out at once, this entire project is just about finished!  Now for the rest of the yard's plans I'll have to wait until I work some more and get enough money to buy lumber for the pergola, but until then I'll keep myself busy with other smaller projects.  I still need to pull the grass out from the cracks in the patio and I can also work on getting rid of the weeds on the side of my house that nobody sees. ... And those darn trees in my hedge!!

Anyways, I'm excited to post pictures of the gardens tomorrow!  And hopefully they'll grow to be gorgeous by the end of the summer and especially when they come back up next spring! :]

First Little Garden

Alright! We have our first sign of life in my backyard! :]

I enlisted Ashley as my "lady's touch" assistant in helping me choose plants and place them in good places in the little garden.  I have plenty more plants purchased, but I need to bury the black edger around the bigger garden and then put the rest of the plants in still.

Once all of that is finished, I'll put some mulch down over both garden areas and should be able to get to work on the bricking of the fire pit.  And then hopefully I can get some solar powered lights to line the path with and place throughout my backyard.

You may notice a pole stabbed into my fire pit... And thats because I figure I'll use it to poke super deep holes in the base of it to help rain water and whatever soak deeper into the soil and never pool up inside of it. Can't hurt right???

Today I am working on my front yard's little garden and the bigger garden.  Hopefully I'll have some more finished projects to post by the end of the night!!

(Ashley is in the picture because she wanted to show off her pretty new sun dress to everybody...)

Garden Digs

Well as you can see, the whole garden and fire pit thing is really starting to come together.  With the help of Mateo, Cuong and Dallas (and Herbie :P) we dug up the grass from the areas that I want to put the gardens and dug a hole for the fire pit.  The holes were dug just deep enough to completely remove the grass so it won't ever return, and the fire pit hole is a good 6 inches deep or so.  I had some old rocks just lying around in my shed, so I figured those would make a great base for the fire pit so it never really gets muddy.  And decided to dig up the grass around the edge of it so there would be an even surface to put the bricks/stones/whatever that I want to surround it with.  

Those stones you see in the walkway between the gardens were just found hidden underneath the grass close to my house, I just threw them there to get them out of the way, but perhaps I could do some neat little walkway with stepping stones like that...  All that's left to do now is get some black plastic edger to border the garden areas, and fill them back up with some top soil, put some gorgeous perennials in there for a low maintenance garden and put some mulch on top!  Then, with the fire pit, all I need is to build up around it with bricks or something and get some solid seating around it.  Should look pretty legit when it's all said and done.

Stump Removal

So yesterday Mateo and I were able to completely remove the stump from a very old and very big evergreen bush. (and a bonus tree that was growing next to it too)  It was a tough project and we had to dig about 3 feet down all around that bad boy, and when we found main roots we hacked them off with an ax.
...pretty sure they'll just die in the ground...
Then, to help us hoist it out of the ground we used this iron rod that I have to get some leverage to snap, twist and pull that thing out of there.  I forgot to take a picture of the hole we had to dig around it... but anyways, I took a picture of all the roots and stump left in there and of the final smooth surface.

Step 2 is today, where we are going to just dig off the top layer of the grass so it won't grow back anymore and set a foundation for my new garden areas throughout the yard.  Then sometime after that (maybe in a few days) I'll get some garden liner, and some fancy soil to make a perfect gardening spot.  And then it just comes down to putting some plants and wood chips in em!

New Directions

No, not the music group from Glee. (Although I do really love that show...)

But I am referring to this blog page instead. I think I'm going to make this blog entirely about my house projects over the summer. Just an amateur's account of what I try that works, and what I try that fails. So, stay tuned for possible strokes of genius! And perhaps (more likely) things that you'll want to avoid at all costs.

My To-Do List for this summer:

-Probably organizing the junk in my basement and making it a cooler hangout place

-Creating a new garden space in my backyard up by my house

-Create another "garden-like" space further into my backyard, I'm thinking a birdbath...

-and the BIG ENCHILADA = Build a Pergola that interacts with the first garden

-Create a fire-pit area a bit out into my backyard that has a neat intended path from said Pergola

.... Basically just make a killer backyard hangout space where friends can gather to chill, drink, and grill out in a beautiful and nice setting.

Let's see how I do. I'll try to post before and after pics along the way. First step... digging a dang stump out of the ground and cutting down some pesky trees from my hedge.

(pictured above)