house update | the exterior part i

While lots of things have been happening on the inside of our house, there’s been some transformations on the outside, too!

If you’re a long time reader of this blog, you may remember wayyy back in 2012 I did a little backyard makeover while procrastinating from painting the front door and tackled this jungle then. I also tackled it the following year and the year after. Every summer it’s been me versus that mess of a tree, and do you know what every battle has in common?? I end up losing the fight and getting poison ivy every. single. year. I always knew it was there and what I was dealing with, and I would bundle up in gloves, pants, long sleeves, the works, and still 2-to-3 days after the tree battle I would wake up with an unsightly rash on my arms and legs.

The tree was more than we could handle. And there are power lines all tangled up in it which the power company refuses to deal with until we get that tree more manageable. So what did we do?

We called in professionals.

In less than an hour they made our tree look like that, to this:

Can you even believe it?! How did they do it? With big equipment and absolutely no fear of heights.

If you have a  monster tree in your yard and are debating on whether or not to hire someone to take care of it, let me help you with the decision: hire someone. Unless, of course, you feel like free climbing a giant tree with a running chainsaw on your hip.

We had another mess of a tree behind the fence (it’s the title picture, but I’ll spare you the scrolling)

and in a matter of minutes became this:

We park our cars back there and it’s creepy at night having a giant bush where someone could potentially be lurking around. Also, it was such a mess back there that people had no problem just throwing candy bar wrappers and other detritus amongst the weeds. Now if only we could get rid of that port-a-potty. Clearly the backyard is still a work in progress, but this bit definitely made some huge strides in the right direction.

Our backyard looks so expansive now!

We have more changes around the front and on the house, so stay tuned next week for that update. As for the weekend, we’re finally starting to paint final colors! More inside posts are on the way, too.

Happy Friday!