Triple The Blessings: Backyard and Deck Update

If you saw my last POST you can see that we just have now started working on the outside of our house. When we first moved in the yard was in great shape but we just have not had the time or the money to spend on it.

As I have posted before we were looking at moving and possibly renting this house out. We tried last year and we just could not find something that would work for us. We felt like God was telling us to wait. We tried again this year and feel like God is still telling us to wait. So since we are staying put we felt like we should do a few things that will help with our family needs.

The backyard was one of those things that needed to be fixed. It has been so bad for so long that we just have not let the kids go out and play. Now that they are a bit bigger we really wanted to make another space that they can play. We have a really small backyard so we are trying to make do with what we have.

Here are some before pics!

We live right next to wetland which means we get all the weeds that blow in! Oh, and we have a friendly mole that likes to come and visit us too!!

I put a post on Facebook asking if anyone knew of some landscapers that they could recommend that were not too expensive. My friend responded and she said that she uses Oceans Landscaping. He came out to give me a bid and had it for me the next day. He was really a pleasure to work with and he and his crew did a fantastic job!

The crew showed up and they kids were so excited to watch.

Here is some progress.

We had them build a small retaining wall along the fence so it would somewhat level out our lawn.

This is where is was at at the end of the first day.

This is about a week after it was installed. We did feel like after it was done that there was just too much bark dust and that we needed a little more grass. He will be coming back to add a little more sod.

This is a bed that we plan on planting some plants to hide this ugly pipe

With the warm grass that we have been having some of the grass has started to die. He is going to replace it when he comes next week to add the rest of the sod.

Here is what our deck looked like. The floor the deck was looking really bad so I wanted to clean it up and put another coat of stain on it.

Here it all is freshly painted. We did have to get a new umbrella as our old one was faded and fell over because of some wind and got a hole in it. I love this new umbrella! I was able to get it at Target for 50% off! I'm always looking for deals.

This bird feeder was from our previous owners and it was green and faded. I added a coat of black paint and it was back to new.

For those of you that saw my flowers from my previous post, this is what it looks like now! I was very unhappy with the way they turned out and practically died within two weeks of getting them! Boo! I did take them back to the place that I got them and they said that they could give me one basket but could not replace the two. I was happy to at least get one basket. I have to say I'm not sure I will do these again. They are very high maintenance! Here is my new basket. Curious to see how long this one will last?