Reconstructing a Fieldstone Wall: Part 1, The Plan
Grab your popcorn! A new fieldstone wall series starts right now. We are reconstructing an extremely old fieldstone wall and taking you along for the ride. You get all the perks without having to do any of the work. You’re welcome. Where Is This Fieldstone Wall? The front of our 1780s property is framed by a low fieldstone wall. Low stone walls are common in our area, where old properties had to be cleared to farm the land. The rocks the farmers pulled out of the ground had to go somewhere. They were used for foundations, stone buildings, cart tracks, and walls or fences. And let me tell you, our…
How I’m Connecting Two Decks With Landscaping
This spring we’ve been working on connecting two decks on the back of our house with landscaping. We’d rather just connect the two decks and make one gigantic deck, but someone forgot to plant a money tree in the backyard. Decks are expensive to build and maintain and this house needs one hundred other things before it needs a bigger deck. Until that day comes we can try to visually connect the decks with landscaping instead. Think of it as a bridge between two islands. Here’s a picture from three years ago when we moved into the Colonial Farmhouse. You can hardly see the small deck on the right because…
Built-In Stone Bench Ideas for our Backyard
If I was going to rank backyard landscaping features on their coolness factor, a built-in stone bench around a firepit would be near the top of the list. Not to mention, it’s an introvert’s type of landscaping. I want you to be comfortable enough, feel welcomed, and have the best time, but I don’t want you to feel so comfortable that you stay forever. Hahahaha! But, seriously, I need my sleep. We have a spot in our backyard that would be the perfect place to add a built-in stone bench. In the below photo, it’s the spot to the right of the wood steps. There’s already a rock wall there.…
The Colonial Farmhouse’s Curb Appeal
When we bought our Colonial Farmhouse I knew there was one thing that would instantly improve its curb appeal: actually being able to SEE the house. Funny how curb appeal works. If you can’t see past the curb there is no appeal. If you’ve been reading this blog for the past year (thank you), then you’ll know we’ve been working on that one facet of our Colonial Farmhouse’s curb appeal since the day we bought the place. Are we that slow or was the job just that large? Yes and yes. Yes, we are slow because we tackle things around here in spurts and starts. Yes, the job was just…
Front Yard Landscaping Progress
Get ready to bust out your high fives because I have front yard landscaping progress to report. In fact, I’d say we are 80% done with the front yard landscaping. Give or take a few percentage points. In fact, let’s not get bogged down in numbers. Let’s celebrate the fact that front yard landscaping progress has been made. Hallelujah. (If you need a refresher on the landscaping plan, you can read about it here or I’ll just catch you up in this post.) I don’t have a true before picture, but here is more or less how our front yard started out: Now this same view looks like this: Much…
Front Yard Landscaping Plan
Let’s talk about the front yard landscaping plan for our Colonial Farmhouse. Plan is actually a loose term. It’s more of an idea floating around in my head. Think big picture priorities, not a deep dive into the details. Honestly, that’s my modus operandi 99% of the time. I’m much better at wrapping my mind around the big picture than I am with flushing out the tedious details of a project. Here’s how the front yard looked when we were considering buying the Colonial Farmhouse in April 2019. I can’t imagine why no one had made an offer on the house yet. Here’s another view of the front of the…
Winter Yard Clean Up
Today I want to talk about something I’ve been avoiding for months – winter yard clean up. I’ve been avoiding this task for so long that in my part of the world it’s not really wintery, but it’s not full on spring either. It’s win-pring. Or maybe wint-ring. Let’s just call it early spring like a normal person would. We do have a few flowers poking their heads out of the ground, but the trees and shrubs have not budded or leafed out yet. That means I still have a narrow window of time to tackle winter yard clean up before things get really bushy. Oh, goodie. Our property was…
6 Month Progress on the Colonial Farmhouse
It’s time for a 6 month progress report on the Colonial Farmhouse. Sure, we’ve lived here longer than six months. 8 1/2 months, actually, but who’s counting? Let’s not get bogged down in the timing. The truth of the matter is I didn’t think about writing a 6 month progress report until now. While this progress report is almost three months late, I’m only sharing progress that was finished within our first six months of living here because that makes it better. Buckle up blog friends because it turns out we’ve made more progress on this Colonial Farmhouse than I thought! KITCHEN: June 2019 Ah, ambience. Just makes you want…
Removing Rotten Trees and a Chainlink Fence
Last week I shared how we cleared a sight line to the pool and in that post I mentioned another section of our property that we’ve also been working on clearing and cleaning up. This was the back of our house when we moved in. There was nothing wrong with the back of the house, but there were some areas we knew could be improved upon fairly easily. The chainlink fence is what really bothered me. It wasn’t the prettiest fence ever built. It also made that space unusable since we don’t have a dog and don’t have plans to get a dog. The trees are what really bothered Handy…
Clearing a Sight Line to the Pool
One of the perks of buying a really old home is that the landscaping is mature. But with every rule there’s always an exception, right? In the case of our colonial farmhouse, our landscaping had ventured into a realm past mature. I’m not sure how to say this delicately…so I won’t. Every single tree, bush, shrub, weed, flower, vine and blade of grass on the property was overgrown when we moved in. Not just overgrown, but out-of-control. Not just out-of-control, but rapidly taking over anything and everything in its path. It crossed my mind that if I stood still for more than a minute, the Virginia Creeper vine would probably…
