End of Summer...New Yard!

This summer has flown by. Between work, photo booth, and showing houses I have not had much time for the house renovations. We hit the final straw when the following conversations occurred:

Neighborhood Kid: "Can I hide behind you car for a second? I'm hiding from my friends."
Jordan: "Sure."
Neighborhood Kid: "Can I walk on your grass to get away?" (with a concered look on his face)
Jordan: "Of Course."
Neighborhood Kid: "What happened to it? Is it poisoned?"

I assured him that he was safe and retreated to the house. Needless to say, our house was still the eye sore in the neighborhood as all the work we completed was inside. The yard resembled a weed field with 15 different types of weeds. So, let the project begin! We decided to rototil up the front and back yard, install a sprinkler system, lay sod, and build a gravel parking area for the truck. This was a huge undertaking, and luckily Josiah stuck around to help. The picture below is the old yard and beautiful yellow house before the paint and the new yard. At least at this point the weeds were green. (As the summer went on, at one point I actually commented to Whit, "I wonder if we could harvest the wheat in our yard.")

The rototilling took longer than expected but we had the sprinklers operational in two days and ready to lay the sod.

 

For the sod, we used Ray's Turf Farm and my brother Jon came to the rescue to help lay all of it. The brothers installed the entire yard (5000 square feet) in less than 6 hours. It was an amazing process to see and they made it look easy. We put fertilizer down first and then watered the yard for 3 days prior to laying the sod. This allowed the ground to settle and made it easy to lay the sod when needed. Then we let the sprinklers do their thing and the yard hasn't died yet...still crossing our fingers.

And here's the finished product! Our beautiful GREEN yard!

 

The yard turned out better than I could have imagined. We were able to enjoy some BBQs out there and I even laid in the grass at one point. If you have any questions or need pointers for changing your own curb appeal, let me know.

Lastly, we had a large space near the garage and didn't want to put more grass in so we created a RV/truck parking area with compacted gravel. The garage doors are ordered and we should be parking in the garage before winter. This space has been perfect and a good addition, especially since there is plenty of yard space.

As always, if you are interested in looking at a house let me know as the prices seem to fall as the winter approaches.