*Thank you to Article for providing the furniture to complete this project!
Hey there strangers, hope your summer is going well! Ours has been good...busy at times, slow at others, sometimes I'm enjoying the heck out of it, and sometimes I look at the calendar and count the days till school starts again. Don't pretend you don't do it too. This is a safe space.
Honestly Adam and I haven't been doing many projects lately, and it's been kinda nice. We did recently finish the hot tub patio …
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Six Months of Landscaping
For the past six months the big project around here has been landscaping. Its been labor intensive and expensive, but the final product has been completely worth it. So let’s dig right in....here is our house in November of last year (at this point we had been living in it for about three months).
Our property is slightly sloped, so drainage is something we needed to address, and Adam and I also wanted a lawn. Real legitimate grass...not something that comes easy in hot, dry, …
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Prepping to Sell – Curb Appeal and Porch Updates
When it comes to selling a house, I feel like curb appeal is the most important thing. Buyers make snap judgements on houses just like they do on people (even if we don’t want to admit it, we do.) If you pull up to a house and it looks overgrown and uncared for, you're going to decide (probably subconsciously) that the owners aren’t excited about owning it and you're not excited about buying it. Once you get inside, any features you don’t like about the house are going to stand out even more, …
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Building the Deck, Part II
I'm finally back with the second part of the deck post. Let's just pick up where we left off last week, which was with a fully assembled deck frame.
We used pine for the frame but decided to spring for cedar for the top, since it looks nice and it's naturally moisture resistant (which means it's less prone to twisting, cracking and swelling. Basically it lays flat.)
Before attaching them to the joists we went ahead and sealed the backside using Flood CWF-UV.
Then it was time …
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Building the Deck, Part I
First things first...let's start with a before picture.
So our backyard....it's ugly. There's no denying it. It is so full of rocks that I'm at a complete loss at what do with them. For the last five years we've been picking them up and using them in landscaping, but I swear they reproduce at night when I'm not looking. Anyway, right outside our back door there was nothing. Well, not nothing...there was toys, dirt, and welcome mats (which were my sad and unsuccessful attempt to keep the …
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The Garden, the Yard, and the Fawn
This post brought to you by Miracle-Gro. All opinions are 100% mine.
This spring I was pretty convinced that our lawn was done for. We installed it last year and it did well during the summer, but then I didn't water it one bit this winter and it showed no signs of life. This spring I watered and fertilized but I never got more than a few arbitrary green blades. Then one glorious day, out of nowhere, it started to hail.
And within about 10 minutes we had this...
And then, just like that, it …
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A Different Kind of Before and After
This post brought to you by Miracle-Gro. All opinions are 100% mine.
I love spring. I love the sunshine and warmth, rain showers and wildflowers, and rivers that are warm enough to tube. I love that my kids have started waking up every morning, running to the window and proclaiming "Mom! It's a beautiful day outside!" I love going to the nursery all energized for planting and having it be crowded as stink because everyone else is just as excited as I am. Granted, winters here in Texas aren't …
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Side Yard Reveal!
*This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Miracle-Gro. All opinions are 100% mine.
Last year we built our garage (which we love BTW) and added a sidewalk to connect it to the house. We also had a fence installed around the backyard, and all of that created a little triangle of secluded yard space.
I'm using the term 'yard' loosely, obviously. It looked terrible and needed some serious attention. When Miracle-Gro asked to team up this spring to complete a few outdoor projects, I …
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The Grass is Always Greener (Three Years of Yard Work)
Lets start at the beginning...the very beginning. In 2008 Adam and I purchased our first home. It had been on the market forever and despite being a newer house it needed some serious TLC. One of the major downfalls and the first thing everyone noticed was that it had no yard. No grass, no driveway, just a lonely house surrounded by gravel...the gross white dusty kind that sticks to your shoes and is always on your car. Gotta love it.
(Also, I never took a before picture of our house, this …
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Create a Self Watering Garden
This post brought to you by Miracle-Gro. All opinions are 100% mine.
How many of you are thinking about starting a garden this year? Intimidated? I'm with you. I started my first garden last year with my "backyard salad beds" post, and I'm embarrassed to tell you that it was a total and complete failure.
The thing about gardens is that you have to be consistent about watering them. I was consistent about watering my garden ...I consistently forgot to water it. I got no lettuce, and my "salad …
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A Completed Fence and Official Backyard Before Pictures
I'm back from my mini beach vacation and wanted to show you our finished fence! It was actually finished a while ago, but I'm not organized enough to get posts out in a timely manner. I'm also not organized enough to line up guest bloggers or schedule posts for when I'm gone, evidently. However, with a name like Domestic Imperfection I think I should be granted a little leniency :)
So it turns out, projects get done really quickly when you hire someone to do them for you. Our entire fence was …
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We’re (Not) Building A Fence!
Nope, we're not..
They are...
And I couldn't be happier about it!
I think this is the first thing we've ever hired out. We could have done it ourselves, but really...we just didn't want to. Why?
* We live on rock. No really, pretty much no dirt exists on our property. Here is a picture (circa 2008) of my dad and brother using a jack hammer to plant a couple small trees.
Okay so that is mostly gravel, but trust me, the rest of the property is solid limestone.
*I can't do it myself …
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Curb Appeal
Our house has zero curb appeal. Zero, zilch, none... it pretty much looks like an abandon house surrounded by a gravel pit. Here is a pic from the MLS back in 2008 as proof that I am telling the truth...
Whomever built this house basically dumped white, dusty, limestone gravel over nearly half of our half acre plot. Why, I don't know. Probably laziness or a lack of funds (there were a lot of other corners cut in the house building process. But that's another post.) Anyway, the Husband and …
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