A Yard Remodel

Some of the reason why this blog will be so fun (for me especially) are the home improvement projects that we've been up to lately.  It's always great to remind myself of the wonderful progress.  We recently dug up both our backyard and our front yard.  You see, our home was built in 1954 and this offers great challenges.  We had so much bermuda grass and so many weeds that we were discouraged at the thought of even trying to keep up these weeds.  This is what happened...
it was as tall or taller than I am in some places.

this is what it looked like after we used a really large rented weed eater and some pruning sheers (yes, some of the weeds had trunks).

This is the load we dropped off the next morning and yes, this is the first appearance of my adorable husband.  You'll see more of him later.

This is what the front yard looked like before we started (minus a few strips of sod).  Not too bad, but what you can't see is that there is lots of bermuda grass and it's not really pretty, although the flowers look nice if I do say so myself.  Sadly, you can't see them because the dirt in the planters is so low.  Definitely time to oust the brick wall.

This is what it looked like almost completely ripped out, one hour later... That is our next door neighbor's fence, not ours.  We're not fans, but it's their property.

This tree was in our front yard, it was BEAUTIFUL when the colors change in the fall.  However, this tree's colors did not change in the fall.  The colors usually changed sometime in early summer.  You see, it was sick.  After Rumble Tree and Turf came out to have a look they informed us that this beautiful tree was injured sometime in it's early stages and it will never recover. 

Here is another photo of the sick bark that was on this tree.  So we had him removed and we replaced it with two maples (that's what he was). You can see that in a little while.

Here you can see the tree that we replaced the old maple with as well as the mowstrip that went in while I was at work one day.  This great company comes out and they drop this stuff and smooth it out.  It was literally done in line 4 hours!

No more bricks!  Just a flat flower bed.

Ignore the fence because we haven't fixed it.  It is on our list.  Just look at the lovely mow strip with the curves for our birch tree stanzas.

 This is where the pathway to the front will go.  Black river rock and sixteen inch stepping stones.

Ta Da!

This was sod laying day, and it looks amazing.

This is as the flowers were being planted.

The only photo that I have of the backyard is the backdrop of our father's day gathering, but that will have to do for now and then in the next few days there will be more to come as we've since done more work.

The guy responsible for much of this hard work (he's pretty handsome):

There you have it!  There were a lot of photos that weren't taken because they happened while I was at work.  There aren't photos of the sprinklers being installed or of the walkway being put in, but we had a lot of really great help from a dear friend because we didn't have the capability to make this happen alone.  We're thankful and blessed for the brain and hands that he offered. 

More to come :)