A solid foundation

In the last couple of days, we've made a ton of progress with getting in the foundation for the new addition!

First the crew poured the footing, adding rebar for extra support.

After the footing set, the wooden forms were removed.

Then the interlocking forms were placed to prepare for the foundation sides to be poured.

That giant boulder under the house was cleared and made ready for the concrete to be poured over it.

The next day, the interlocking forms were arranged along the perimeter of the foundation and the concrete was poured between them.

You can see the rebar supports sticking out of the top of the foundation. Those will eventually be trimmed down.

After the foundation is fully set, the forms will be pulled off. After that, the flooring and framing should go up quickly!

In the meantime, our front yard has become almost as much of a mess as the backyard...

Between the bobcats, cement trucks, and pickups that have been driving through the front yard over the past couple of weeks, the front yard is pretty well destroyed. We'll definitely have a lot of work ahead of us next spring!

Green thumbs and blue hydrangeas

The last couple of weeks, we've continued work on the front gardens. There's been lots of weeding, raking, shoveling dirt, spreading dirt, digging holes, planting, packing dirt, watering, mulching... you get the picture. It's dirty and tiring work, but I've found that I actually enjoy it a lot.

One of my favorite flowers is the blue hydrangea. I love the giant clumps of bright blue blooms that I see all in front of people's homes all summer.

Usually, the hydrangea bushes I see are 4 or 5 feet high, with flowers practically pouring out of the foliage.
Because I love them so much, I bought three blue hydrangea bushes for the new garden bed in the front of the house.



Now, because I couldn't conceivably spend $80 on each 4-foot high bush (!), I had to instead spend $30 on three much smaller, 2-foot high bushes.



I know, I know. They're pretty dinky right now. I just hope that they fill out and grow. And who knows, in 10 years they may end up as high as the porch and be the envy of the neighborhood. Gotta start somewhere, I suppose!

We also snagged a few phlox plants for in between the bushes. Phlox is a ground covering perennial, so the idea is they'll expand over time. We're going to pick up a few more to continue them down the rest of the garden.

We still have to mulch this front garden. We also need to finish laying the edger stones around the curved corner. You can see where we've laid some grass seed as well in front. Since the size of the new garden is smaller than what was there before, we're hoping to get some grass growing in that dirt.



Behind the hydrangea bushes, closest to the porch, we want to plant a row of taller boxwoods. This will give us some greenery year-round, and will be relatively easy to maintain. Just some trimming to keep their shape. Plus it will create a nice tiered effect, with a row of boxwoods, stepping down to the hydrangeas, and then down to flowers at ground level.

In the side garden, the planting is finished for now and we've got everything mulched.



We planted some more phlox, along with one azalea bush in each bed.



The bush towards the forefront that looks like it's dead is a dormant blue hydrangea that's just beginning to bud. This one I purchased at a local greenhouse (and spent a bit more on it)... it's guaranteed to bloom continuously through late summer. I'm curious to see how this particular variety does compared to the three in the front of the house.

The lower garden has an azalea bush flanked by a couple more phlox.



I'm looking forward to seeing how these plants last through the season. I'm going to keep an eye out for some summer and early fall bloomers to add to the gardens, so that there is something flowering all the time.

In other house news, after discovering some major wood rot in one of our kitchen windowsills, the time has seriously come to begin moving forward with our complete kitchen renovation. I'm already overwhelmed by the thought of how complicated (and expensive!!) this reno is going to be. For now we're stuck with the incredibly fun task of researching contractors and comparing bids... I'll post more on the details soon!

Stump tuggin'

We continued the front garden project that we started yesterday, and we've made some great progress!

First, we finished building the second tier of the side garden. We dug out some of the slope and stacked two rows of stone pavers to create a retaining wall. Then we capped them off with a row of edgers.



I'm really happy with how this wall turned out! (I picture planting some phlox or something similar so that the flowers drape and pour over the wall.)

As often happens around here, our plans then took a little detour and instead of planting and mulching, we decided to rip out all of the dead stumps and dying bushes from the front of the porch.

The previous owners left behind a few unsightly stumps in the front yard.



Not pretty.

After looking at them for the last 10 months, we decided it was definitely time for them to go.



Luckily, we had a pickup truck, chain, and the help of our bff Josh. It was time to tug out some stumps!



After wrapping the chain around the stump, all it took was backing up the truck and the stumps came up pretty easily.



After the old stumps were out, we turned our attention to the half-dead, awkwardly placed evergreen and rhododendron bushes.



We figured while we were tuggin' stumps, we might as well give everything the heave-ho. Those two bushes came out pretty easily, and the change was already huge.



We were left with quite a mess, though. The back of the bushes had apparently been a dumping ground for random garbage. We found everything from an old diaper (seriously, one of the grossest things everrr) to a 3-foot long iron spike.



Some raking was all it took to get the area back in shape. After we had it cleaned up, we got out some twine and stretched it across to get a straight line.



Once we had the twine set to use as a guide, we started laying in the edger stones along the perimeter of the new garden bed.



We then implemented the very scientific method of standing on the stones to level them.



This was followed by the equally technical process of hitting the stones with a hammer to get them in line.



We ran out of edgers just before we could complete the border, but we laid out what we had leftover to get an idea of the end result.


After just a few hours of work today, the change to the front of the house was already pretty tremendous!



And because you know I can't live without a good before and after, let's take a look at where we're at now...

Before:


And after!!:


I'll be sure to keep ya'll updated when we get to planting. Anyone have recommendations for low-maintenance plants that do well in part sun/shade??