Can you see beyond the ugly?!

For this week’s Metamorphosis Monday Blog Party I’m sharing the beginning of a transformation… and a plan for a  major metamorphosis… but the major question is: Can you see beyond the ugly… all the way to the lovely? Can you imagine how wonderful it’ll look when it’s all done?? Thanks to Susan at Between Naps on the Porch for hosting the blogsphere gathering!

 

Boy do we have a BIG project on our hands!! And even though it’s BIG and it’ll be HARD WORK, I’m excited!!

What is it?

Over the summer Brian and I are hard & landscaping our front yard!

Our poor little house and yard… this is what the place looked like when we purchased the house close to 2 years ago:

You can also see my pup, Simon… as usual, he’s hogging the limelight in all my photos! Gesh! :-)

Pretty damned ugly, hey?

We’ve taken to calling these bushes “hedges” but truth be told, they’re just overgrown wild cedar trees. Who in their right mind would plant them and let them grow to such behemoth ugly monstrosities?! The worst… these horrible trees block so much sunshine from the yard.

 

Hideous!

As soon as we could, we had the front cedars removed. Unfortunately, though, the side cedars you’re looking at above are sitting on our neighbour’s property… and for some crazy reason he doesn’t want them removed. Argh!

Anyway… we have a solution that I’ll share in a minute… first, here’s what the yard looks like right now:

And looking from the house down to the street:

Still not the lovely yard I want, but so much better!

BUT… There’s the tree you see in each photo above, and spliced together below…

I might get in trouble with some of our readers ~ believe me when I say that this tree – a mega-huge (Brian says it’s over 70’ high!) cedar riddled with and being choked by ivy - has seen much better days. I’ve had an arborist by for a consult and she agrees… this tree has GOT to go. In fact, the tree remover guys are coming by tomorrow to take it down!

I promise… we’ll be planting another tree a little further up the yard!!

While I have many of you shaking your heads and wondering if I’ve gone totally bonkers, I’d better show you what we’ve done with our side of the neighbour’s “hedge”!!

Yikes!!

I guess I’d better tell you the plan now… and yes, there IS a plan! :-)

Let’s start with the trees above… a simple solution… we’re putting up a fence. Our side of the hedge was so horrible! Can you see the dead earth that extends out about 5 feet from the tree trunks? That’s how far the trees extended into our yard! And practically all the branches were dead. We’ve reclaimed our 5 feet of yard by removing the dead branches – and our neighbour has his somewhat better-looking side (he get’s the sun over there). We’ll have a 6’ high fence, stained in a charcoal grey… and in front of that fence, and down this side of the yard, we’ll have a garden filled with plants that do well in the shade. I think it’ll look FAB!!

Another look at the yard from the street:

The most obvious thing is that tree… once it’s removed you’ll finally be able to see the house! Of course, that means that we’ll have to finish painting the darn thing! Haha! Can you see my big test patch?!

But the BIG job I mentioned?? We’re going to be labouring away over a series of retaining walls! Three of them, in fact… including stairs and a new walkway!

Speaking of walkway… Brian got started this weekend:

I’ve found some photos of retaining walls to give you an idea of what we’re going to be doing…

We’ll be building two tiers like this (above) lower down in the yard… the lower wall will be about 3’ high the upper wall will be about 2’ high.

We’ll be using an Allan Block Jumbo Junior (a smaller brick) in “natural” (a light grey) with a charcoal top cap. The photo below is the Jumbo Junior in light grey… although a much taller application then our walls.

The stairs will look great… something like this… 0nly we’ll have 4 steps ~ a 6’ landing/walkway ~ then another 3 steps up to the yard.

 

More bricks in grey (although larger then the ones we’ll use)

Finally… a photo of what I want our walkway to look like (colour and pavers)… except I’m planning on framing the walk with darker charcoal pavers. I think it’ll look fantastic!!

If all goes to plan, we should be starting on this project later this week. I’ll be sure to post updates when I can!!

Wish us luck!! I think we’ll need it!

Now… make your way back to Between Naps on the Porch where you’ll find transformations that don’t ask you to imagine… they already look great!!

Victoria from Edin Interiors