Cleaning up the Backyard

Happy Memorial Day! What is everyone up to today? Barbecues, swimming, spending time with friends or family? We've had a pretty laid-back holiday weekend. The weather has been amazing, and it's been the first full weekend for us I think that it's actually felt like summertime.

We've spent most of this weekend cleaning up the yard. We've gotten the yard mowed and the garden almost ready to plant. Trent pressure-washed the back side of the house and patio, and I pulled weeds in my flower beds.

A couple of weeks ago, Trent poured cement by the garage for a little path to the door. He's working on a little drainage system there so the water doesn't build up by the garage foundation. We have a new door we still have to put in to replace the old one, too. 

As you can see, the board on the bottom of that old door was used for a little spray-painting project.  It's been repurposed. :)

The cement pathway turned out pretty good once it dried, and now we just need to tear out the old door and replace it with the new one, then put down new rock around the side of the garage. Another little step in making the yard better. (Though there's still a long way to go!)

We added a fifth panel to the back patio fence, and are going to add a gate to the end of it. The tops also still need to be cut off of the posts, but we're loving the privacy so far.

What we did most of the day on Saturday was clean up the garden. We still had tons of leaves back there and the remainders of the flowers we planted for the wedding last summer. There was also still tons of mulch, some weeds, and weed fabric.

I raked up most of the leaves, and we pulled up the weed fabric.  There were a couple more piles back there of branches and sticks from part of a pine tree that had fallen during a winter snowstorm we had. Trent cut up the branches with his new chainsaw, and I carried the logs over to the log pile. We then started burning the piles of leaves and wood. 

It took a full afternoon to get everything that was back there completely burnt down and cleaned up.

It was a pretty windy day, so we had to do a little at a time. It all burnt down pretty fast, though for the most part!

By Saturday evening we had the whole garden cleared. Now all that is left to do back there is till up the dirt and plant our veggies.

I'd say our log pile is ready for a few fires this summer, too. Thanks to that tree that fell!

The patio is almost ready for hanging out again, though I'd still like some new patio furniture. We'd eventually like to redo the entire patio and maybe build a deck out here, too, but that will probably have to wait until another year!

The fence is a nice addition, though. I love that there are no neighbors' windows right there in plain sight anymore!

Sunday I spent the afternoon pulling weeds and watching Trent pressure-wash the back side of the house. It needed it pretty badly. All of the dirt and grime-y stuff had built up on there again.

It can make for a pretty bad eye sore. The pressure-washer does wonders, though. It's pretty cool to watch all of that dirty stuff just wash away.

I know he probably wished I was helping, but hey, I did get some color while I was sitting out there. It was a gorgeous day, and I was comfortable!

And here is the back of the house, all cleaned. Another huge project that we have left to do is make this side of the house even with the other side - raising the ceiling and roof to be level with the bathroom and bedroom side of the house.. a huge project that's going to take a lot of work, but we're getting ready to take it on. After ripping out the back room ceiling, we'll have to start on it soon. I'm not sure if I'm quite ready for that big of a job!

The good news is that after we get that done, we'll be able to re-roof the house, get new siding, and a new door back here. All in time, though! Oh, the joys of renovating a house...

In other news, the peonies out front have been in bloom for about a week now. I love peonies. I picked a few and put them in a little blue mason jar on the front porch.

A nice little touch, don't you think? 

Well, until next time...I'm sure we'll be working on more projects in the near future!