For months it was left bare. It looked horrible and soon filled with weeds. I weeded which was such hard work and then time passed and we didn't do anything with it. Then again it filled with weeds. Once again, it looked horrible.
One reason we weren't doing anything to it was because we eventually want to redo the whole front. So, why redo it if were only going to rip it all out eventually. This conversation caused frustration with Fred and I so we tried to avoid it and the front ended up staying horrible.
I then just couldn't take it anymore. I told him it might be YEARS until we redo the front and I feel like it's worth spending some money to make it look decent and presentable in the meantime.
I did my research, made a list and came up with plants that we could plant that should do well in full sun and require low maintenance. Overall it took about a month of HARD LABOR.
The first step was weeding and doing 2 rounds of weed killer over the dirt. That filled up the barrel with lots of dirt so after it was full I needed to wait a week until the barrel was empty.
The second step was churning the dirt that was there and throwing out the rocks and sticks I found within the dirt. Again, the barrel got full from that so I had to wait another week until it was emptied.
The third step was buying mulch and placing that over the dirt. It took 8 bags.
The fourth step was figuring out what plants would go where. I drew 10 drawings of the front with various ideas. I ended up with a minimal approach and using a lot of what was already planted.
The fifth step was laying down landscapers fabric. My dad had some extra and I was able to use some of his but that only lasted me 1/3 of the whole thing. So, I had to make a trip to Lowes to get more. I cut, cut around the existing plants and nailed down it all. My knees were killing me.
The sixth step was a trip to Lowes and the local nursery and figuring exactly what plants would go where.
The seventh step was planting all the plants. This took forever and felt like the hardest part. By this point I just wanted to be DONE. I was so done. My body hurt. I had to hatchet my way through a lot of roots that were in the way of where I wanted to plant. The garbage barrel was SO heavy and full. The garbage man ended up NOT taking our barrel because it was too heavy so I had to disperse a lot of dirt in the paseo. It's not empty but I did take a lot of the dirt out. I'm hoping that they'll take it this next trash day.
The eighth step was laying down wood chips for the top.
Overall, I went to Lowe's 5 times. My body was so sore and I hurt everywhere. It was so hot and I was sweating and just wet. It was such hard work. I feel accomplished but I don't ever want to do extensive yard work like that again.
I think we'll keep the front as it is for a while. We have many other things we'd like to do first including new siding and paint for the house. It looks great and I'm hoping will be easy maintenance with little weeding since we did weed killer, mulch, landscapers fabric and wood chips.
We added some light to go in the planter area too. It looks really nice and I'm happy with how it turned out. I ended up spending about $400 dollars total so not too bad.
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