Welcome to the Jungle!

Those are the words that came to mind every time me and the hubs pulled up to our house.  And, there was good reason for it…because our house looked like this.

And this...

And this....

And this...

And, well, you get the picture.

Since our contractor couldn’t start for the first few weeks after we closed, we knew we had to concentrate on making changes to the exterior.  And lucky us, not only was the lawn insanely overgrown, but the house was painted a wonderful shade of green that seemed to effortlessly blend in with the surrounding plant life.  To be honest, our house was a hot mess.  Thankfully, the only thing holding this hot mess back from realizing it's full potential was some serious elbow grease (and perhaps a little blood, sweat and tears...well actually, no tears as of yet).

That much needed elbow grease came in large part from who else, but Mom and Dad.  My parents were thrilled to volunteer their services.  Before we knew it, they hopped in their car and arrived from North Carolina ready to work hard for two entire weekends.  They put in so much time and effort, and boy do the results show!  Between the 4 of us we were able to make some major progress on our house.  My parents basically painted the entire exterior of the house, including the shutters, foundation, porch steps, and porch railing.  It totally proves the point that a couple gallons of paint can go a long way for making an inexpensive transformation!

We also tore out, cut down and trimmed back as much plant life as we could.  While the beds we got to are pretty much bare for now, we will eventually fill them as we get the money to.  We’d rather have the clean, bare beds than the little shop of horrors that was going on before.  (No joke, there were many bushes that had prickers on them that were about an inch and a half long...those things were painful to handle!)

Mom painting away.

Only part of the huge brush pile we have amassed in our backyard.





We can finally see the screened-in porch!

Dad taking care of those sad brick steps.

Much better than when we started!

Of course there is still so much more to do outside, but at least we are chipping away at the major to-do list.  This past weekend we rebuilt some rock walls, ripped out two massive root balls from dying bushes and put down some much needed grass seed in some areas.  Baby steps…soon we won’t be an eye sore anymore!