Remember when John met his frog friend (well, technically his toad friend) here?
Well, this time around we made a new neighborhood acquaintance…
… a snaaaaaaake! And we were skeeeeered. But not to scared to take a picture. Thankfully he was just a harmless garter snake.
Why were we outside? Yard maintenance. We figure our exterior will need a whole lotta small phase projects if it’s going to ever-so-slowly transform like our last one did, which went from this…
… to this (over the course of 4.5 years)…
So since that’s nothing we’ll ever be able to accomplish overnight – or even within a year – we’re all about breaking that humongous task down into much smaller bite sized pieces to tackle slowly over time. So here are a few little outdoor undertakings that we’ve recently checked off.
First on the list: spray the mailbox and our house numbers with ORB (oil-rubbed bronze spray paint) so they would look a little more refreshed.
The most fun part of the process was when John brought it to me using rubber pot holder thingies because it was literally too hot to touch from sitting out in the sun out front:
Up close and personal, she definitely wasn’t looking so hot (even though she was literally quite hot):
So I wiped down all the bird poo with a wet cloth (I live a glamorous life) and used my favorite ORB spray paint (hi my name is Sherry and I have an ORB problem) to apply a few thin and even coats (you can check out some spray painting tips here). I also sprayed the rusted tops of the screws for holding the mailbox in place and our brass house numbers.
Oh and for “drop cloths” I usually use an old fabric one (or cardboard from the recycling bin) but this time I decided to use the same few big black plastic bags that I’ve used for other ORB projects as of late (I just ball them up after they’re dry to be reused since I’m such a spray painting fool these days, and hate to toss them after one go).
Can’t show you all of our house numbers of course, but the mailbox is looking mighty shiny:
Oh and I did this on a Sunday so as not to confound the mailman. By the end of the day everything was dry and I was able to screw them back into place. And while I was up there I snapped a few shots of the flowers since we had some requests for updated pics to see how they’ve grown.
But first, here they are before, back when we planted them:
And here they are now, paired with the freshly sprayed mailbox (we photoshopped out the newly painted house numbers on the post though):
Isn’t it amazing how much they’ve filled in? And it’s worth noting that we only watered them once (when we planted them) and it’s been scorchingly hot so I’m extreeeeeeeemely impressed. Wave petunias are the way to go, it seems.
Even Lord Squirrelio is enjoying the expanding flora:
Oh and as for the mailbox post, we’ve considered painting it but kind of like how it blends into the landscape thanks to the old weathered wood. A landscape designer friend of ours has a theory that you should never bring attention to your mailbox or post itself, just keep it neat and let it be what it is (so it doesn’t stand out/detract from the yard around it). That natural wood post definitely does that. We still might paint it down the line, but for now we’re happy to leave it au naturale.
But I digress with all of the mailbox updating. Back to the title. Here’s why we’re those neighbors again. Remember when we admitted that we had a bit of a mailbox problem (before we weeded, laid down landscaping fabric, planted some flowers, mulched, and removed some extra signs on our mailbox post) which made us quite the embarrassed new family in town?
Well, we also have this insane side yard that doesn’t look like it’s ours, but it is. Yup, everything in this picture is our lot:
Even the crazy shaggy stuff on the left.
See, it’s a whole lotta don’t-know-what-to-do-with-that-but-don’t-want-to-have-to-mow-or-weed-or-otherwise-maintain-it space to deal with, so we decided to see if we could naturalize it (the neighbors have some naturalized land on their lot next to ours so we thought it would “go together” nicely).
Oops. Total failure. It just ended up looking crazy and overgrown:
Not only wasn’t the overgrown grass doing it for us, a few well meaning neighbors actually mentioned that we might want to mow it before “we get reported to the neighborhood association.” Talk about embarrassing. We muttered something about trying to naturalize it like the lot to the left, admitted that it definitely wasn’t working out the way we hoped, and vowed to at least cut the grass in the front for less of an unkempt appearance from the curb.
But it meant that we had to attempt to mow that wayyyyy-too-looong-to-easily-mow grass. Thankfully big strong John got ‘er done! It didn’t take five minutes (more like about an hour of slow back and forth maneuvering and turning off the mower to get clumps of grass out every ten minutes or so)…
… but slowly but surely…
… we went from that crazy overgrown embarrassment to a slightly more manicured-up-top look, thanks to just moving that front strip:
We like how it actually looks like it’s part of our lot now, even if it’s obviously the more naturalized portion of it:
Now it looks like the area down the hill is intentionally wild (hooray- no weeding or incline mowing necessary down there) but the area up top is a bit neater from the road. You know, as opposed to looking all sad slash abandoned.
In other small-things-we-tackle-in-the-hopes-that-in-five-years-we’ll-blink-our-eyes-and-love-our-exterior news, we also planted three more evergreens in the back area of our house to hopefully provide more future privacy from the back (and to pay the environment back for doing all this clothespin driving).
We went with three more of the same fast growing evergreen trees that we planted on the side of our house (so you can check out more on how that all went down here).
Next we did a little weeding. Or should I say big weeding. We don’t know what the heck is in the soil here, but check out the size of some of the weeds springing up around the someday-we-hope-it’ll-look-naturalized-and-wooded side & back yard:
Yeah, that’s a giant dandelion. And yes, it felt like we were suddenly on the set of Jurassic Park and would soon see a pterodactylfly by or something.
Sure we want some areas of our side and back yard to look woodsy and naturalized someday, but for now these big ol’ weeds were more that a little embarrassing. So we dug them out and marveled at their shrub-like proportions. Crazytown.
As for our outdoor checklist, it’s waay too long to share in its entirety, but we’ll jot down a few things that we did (just for the satisfaction of crossing them off) and list a few more objectives that we hope to tackle over time:
weed the side of the carport(done here with some mom help)limb up the giant magnolia(done here)build a side patio(done over the course of about four weeks here)weed, mulch & plant the embarrassingly unkempt mailbox area(done here)plant three fast growing evergreen trees on the side of our house for privacy(done here)make some mini porch updates(done here)upgrade the mailbox and our house numbers with some ORBplant three more fast growing evergreen trees in the back of our houseweed the side and back yard areas, so they naturalize with trees (not giant dandelions)- avoid snakes (so far so good, but this is an ongoing initiative)
- transplant the tree that’s planted ON our house (seen here)
- remove/transplant a ton of bushes and shrubs that block our front walkway & our house in general (in multiple phases)
- paint the front door
- frame out the round country-ish columns on the porch
- remove the also-country-ish scalloped header on the porch
- build raised bed gardens in the back
- add a wood compost bin in the back (right now we use this slightly less handsome compost method)
In short, we’d like to slowly tame the jungle that is this in a bunch of not-too-intimidating phases:
Because let’s be honest, you can’t even see the porch. Le sigh.
What about you guys? Do you completely “gut” your yard and rebuild it all at once, or are you one-project-at-a-time folks like us? Have you ever seen a sneaky little snake? Or a giant person-sized dandelion? Or been told to mow your lawn by the neighbors? Oh man, we’re still kind of blushing.
Sara says
Well you are making great progress on your yard. I’m a bit jealous! We’ve been living in our house for 3 years and sloooooowly but surely the yard is coming along. We bought our house in the city, in a neighborhood needing some love…from friends that totally renovated it….but…sadly…ignored the yard. Yard work can feel so overwhelming!!! Just when I felt on top of it….baby comes along and life no longer includes much yard time. Some day I’ll have that dream yard!!!
Anya says
Love the painted mailbox! Earlier this spring I repainted my plain aluminum one with RustOleum Dark Bronze Hammered spray paint. The hammered texture is subtle (not weird, luckily) and the mailbox blends into the landscaping much better now! Also, noticed that replacing your compost bin is on your list. My boyfriend and I built one with these plans from Lowes: http://www.lowes.com/cd_Build+a+Compost+Bin_850412832_#
and we love it! We add leaves, some weeds (ones without seeds and that can’t grow with runners), and all our kitchen scraps for a few months to one side, while older compost breaks down completely on the other side, then we clean out that side to put on our garden and start a new “active” side. It works really well!
YoungHouseLove says
Ooh, very cool! Thanks for the link!
xo,
s
Talia says
The same thing happened to my boyfriend and I, I know exactly how embarrassed you feel about being told you need to mow the lawn! We are remodeling a 50s ranch style home in a rural area while living in our parents house. The bf passed by our house after neglecting it for a month and the grass had grown FOUR FEET HIGH. He tried to mow without anyone seeing him but as soon as the mower was turned on all the neighbors came out, warning him that ppl were calling the county on us, how mortifying! But hey, sometimes there are things more important then mowing the lawn, love your blog!
Jess says
My dad called me last summer from the cab of his pickup truck, which was parked in the backyard. He wanted me to come out and remove a small black garden snake because he couldn’t handle it. He also once freaked out because there was a very small (like 6 inch long) black snake near the front of the house. I went to remove it and it was dead! Oh dad. He wouldn’t enjoy this entry very much.
Cass says
J & S, Make sure that you don’t leave doors open – especially in the heat. Because occasionally those sneaky snakes might come in looking for water or shade. I live a mile or so away from you, and last September my 5 year old daughter encountered a 5-foot black snake on our inside stairs (in the absolute center of our house – not near the front or back door). Lulu (as we call the snake) was either headed UP towards the children’s bedrooms or DOWN from the bedrooms. We suspect the snake had been in the house for a day or so because we had had our boiler replaced in the basement and the back door was left open for a long time. It made me sick to think of all the fort building my 18 month old and 5 year old had been doing that day. EEEKKK.
YoungHouseLove says
Eeks! Thankfully we keep doors closed to contain Clara and Burger. Haha.
xo,
s
Renae says
The previous owners of our house let everything go for about 10 years. When we moved in, everything was super overgrown, shaggy and a little daunting for us (we moved from a 450 sq foot apartment in Seattle that didn’t even have a porch). Lucky for us, my dad let us borrow his company’s backhoe and we leveled almost everything last summer, put in a new walkway, patio, pallets of sod, etc, etc. We left all the big trees of coarse. It was a ton of work, but its been so nice this summer to enjoy being outside and not have that looming over our heads!
Lisa says
One thing you can do if you see more snakes and you find you want to have a bit more control over them… build a ‘rock nest’ for them out of sight, say in the back of the naturalized area. They’ll tend to hang out there under the pile of rocks, rather than in your yard.
Tony says
Just a word of warning: Tall grass and brush are a haven for ticks, so make sure you check yourself and other living things you love for them after spending time in areas where the harborage will occur (I am a Pest Control Tech in Central NJ).
YoungHouseLove says
Oh yeah, we’ve already learned that our new property’s got more tick friends. I’ve gotten two and Burger’s gotten one – fortunately both caught as soon as we came back inside. Thanks for the reminder!
-John
Amber Ludwinek says
Our house is a older ranch too and we had the mailbox post left natural, but then one day my husband painted it white while we were touching up the trim of our house and it looks a million times better and fits in with the feel of our home. I couldn’t believe how big of a difference the white post made! Try painting it in photoshop and see how you like it but I think it would be the right move for your home too. Now we just need to tackle the landscaping around it…
Jeannette Barnes says
When we attempted to clean up our yard, we hired three “rent-a-teens” from our church. They earn money towards mission trips and things like that from helping do yard work, so 3 strapping young men gave us 2+ hours of hard work, clearing branches, weeds, creating flower beds, and collecting the millions of left-behind toys from the previous owners. It was GREAT! We had a much cleaner space to start with after that, for like $90 and a pizza lunch. :)
YoungHouseLove says
Woah- that’s an awesome approach! S smart!
xo,
s
Jennifer says
Ok I’ve never really read a blog. I don’t have time. I go on facebook once in awhile. I check email. I use a calculator. A pencil and I use to have a phone with buttons. Well my husband deployed and he just came home with an ipad…for me. So I used it. And I found a BLOG. That blog led to another and another and somehow I got on yours and now I am reading everything you post. What has become of me? I am reading and reading and reading. I must stop and get back to my life (which is doing what you do but with many bad decisions thrown in ie will turquoise, chartreuse and navy and white polka dots go with grey with a hint of purple silk drapes? pondered while painting things wicked witch green aka chartreuse with galpagos blue trim…anyway) Wish you were my neighbors and this whole thing would be hilarious. (I decided to paint my wedding cake ceiling white during my husband’s deployment at 10 pm–what this means is I have two small kids and should be asleep preparing for the next insane day of working and taking care of my home and being a single mom but instead I paint–in the wee small hours of the morning–a ceiling…with my cat). Again, here I am still on your blog. Thanks for the great information. I’m going to take on the spraying of my front door hardware next…just not at 10 pm.
YoungHouseLove says
Aw, so glad you found us! I mean, I want you to have a life too. Haha. But we love that you’re enjoying our blog!
xo,
s
Jennifer says
very cute site! We FINALLY have a house with a great big grassy yard! Im sooo excited to start work! im sure it wont last long though! :/
Charlotte Tree Removal says
Yikes!! A Snake! I love the way your home looks after the 4.5 years, drastic improvement. I’ve been following for a while now. P.S. Wish I had a frog in my yard. God bless, and happy gardening!!
-Tony Salmeron