We bought THAT guy's house...

You know, the creepy old guy who casts a dark shadow on the entire block. And we didn't even know it at closing.

We knew it was weird that the previous owner didn't have a blade of grass in either the front or back yard, but we liked the solid fence and well-established arborvitae in the backyard so we entirely overlooked the grass issue. Grass seed is cheap, right??

Here's the front and back yard at inspection:



Well, if it wasn't enough that our house was La Casa de Turquoise, the landscape left much to be desired. As if we needed another project, right?? But in the words of our wonderful realtor, "you get to make it exactly what you want." I couldn't agree more. In buying a house in need of surface-level remodeling (light fixtures, countertops, shrubs), you really do end up with a house that is exactly what you want without paying 30 years of interest for all the details. We totally looked passed the weirdness of no grass (mind you, we live in suburban central- no grass = creepy weird).

It was slow going. Over Memorial Day weekend, we ripped up, tore down, and hauled off all the existing trees and shrubs. That's when we learned we bought THAT guy's house. Apparently, he had let the arborvitae get 6 feet tall at one point (the HOA president gave him a complementary buzz at one point we found out), the dark purple-ly red trees completely blocked the house. The rhododendron nearly swallowed you up trying to get in the front door, had never been pruned back, and bloomed bright red, clashing profoundly with the trees as well as the house.

When the neighbors saw us out there, they ran (no really, liked jogged over) to our aid, providing chainsaws and introductions. Mind you we had moved in over three months earlier. It's like they all wanted to help increase their property value as much as we wanted to increase ours :)

Here's how it looked by the end of the day:

In June, we bought 20 cubic yards of topsoil and planted grass seed (freaking crazy how much is involved!!). By July, we finally needed a lawn mower. We were going to wait until August for plants (believe me, I had landscape plans drawn up for months!), but my birthday was last week (more on that good stuff later) and my genius brother sent over a Home Depot gift card for an amount that put a pretty good dent into the total.

That gift card was in my possession less than 12 hours. Here's what I got:

5 gallon-sized Blue lavender (Lavandula angustifolia)

12 Northern Lights Tufted Hair grasses (Deschampsia caespitosa)

1 Microphyllus Variegatus euonymus (Euonymus japonicus)

Later tonight we will plant these bad boys when it cools off and decide on a few annuals.

Eventually we will prep and plant the other side of the driveway (about a 6 foot wide stretch) to mirror this, but that means ripping out 20 more scraggly arborvitae, hauling in and leveling some topsoil, laying grass seed..... in time, in time. For now I'm in love with our airey, beachy, clean-lined and *alive* front yard.