House & Yard Updates!

Well, well, well.... it's been too long! I can hardly believe that 3 months have passed since we took possession of the house and MOVED IN :) We're nowhere near done (and don't plan to be for many years) but we're unpacked and getting pretty settled. We've even tackled some BIG projects - like the yard!

Here are some updated pictures and descriptions:

SOLD! The house is officially ours on February 25, 2010 :)

Here is the finished house with front landscaping... in this photo we're still missing our "HOA" grass between the street and the sidewalk, but it's been installed since then.

A closer view of the front.

This is a view of the front side yard... you'll see concrete here later :)

Now it's time for TREES! We planted 18 by ourselves!

These are the two BIG trees we got - still babies - but happy and healthy!

A Fantex Ash and a Purple Leaf Plum

This tree should grow to be 40 feet tall with a 20 foot canopy... SHADE!!

Grow baby grow... it can't happen fast enough.

It took us almost 4 weeks to get the sprinkler system in after we planted the trees... but we managed to take really good care of them - deep soaking them in the Arizona clay for about an hour at a time, twice a day... I still haven't seen the water bill.

Next up - 16 Italian Cypress trees! These guys will grow in tight columns up to 30 feet high if we let them. Some very nice privacy indeed.

Tyler dug all the holes!

I dropped in all the trees and backfilled with clay and mulch :)

We accomplished 18 trees in about 4 hours on Easter Sunday... YAHOO!

Time for Rock and Sod!

6 Tons of Rock and 2100 SF of Sod look like this :)

If you click on and blow up the picture, you'll also see the cement walkway we had poured on the left side of the house.

Beginning to lay the weed barrier...

Here you can see the corner cement slab we had poured. When the tree gets larger we should have some shade. This will be a perfect place to put a bench and some potted shade plants.

Here's another good shot of the curbing barrier we put in around the perimeter to contain the pea gravel we put down in the tree/flower beds. You can also see where we extended the concrete around part of the house - another great place for a sitting group, some art, and some potted plants :) I'm seriously honing my "green thumb" - so far, so good...

Before we could begin laying the sod, we had to level the yard and removed about 4 tons of dirt!

And here we go!

We discovered early in the process that it was rather difficult to cut the sod pieces, especially around the sprinkler heads and trees... so we got creative!

(observe the electric turkey knife - genius!)

This really was no small task.

We started laying weed barrier and leveling dirt about 7am. All the rock was in by about 11am. Sod started going down just after that... but by 3pm in the blazing sun, we began to lose steam and had to call in reinforcements to finish the job before dark!

Enter Todd...

...and Lillie!

They SERIOUSLY saved the day!

And I was actually helping - not just taking pictures :)

VOILA!

We finished - just before the sun went down!

Here you can see the huge 10x13 slab of concrete we had poured to extend the patio (to the right).... and the 2 foot border we extended from underneath the patio, adding a lot more usable square footage to the yard.

And the sprinkers work :) The sod is flourishing and we're enjoying the finished yard so much! There are a few more photos to come... including the dogs basking in their new space :)

Stay tuned!