We recently tackled some updates in our back yard. I haven’t shared this space much because – to be honest – until now there wasn’t much to share! It was in a DIS-GUST-ING state. Let me show you.
bathrooms, bedrooms, dining room, entryway, Family Room, Garden, guest room, Home & Garden, kitchen, Living Room, office, playroom, rec room
Settling in
bathrooms, bedrooms, dining room, entryway, Family Room, Garden, guest room, Home & Garden, kitchen, Living Room, office, playroom, rec room
So this happened
We bought a house. Specifically, this one.
Backing up a bit, we really enjoyed our townhome but it was time for a change. More space, more privacy and NO strata. We wanted to move before Chace got older as we didn’t want to change his little world mid-grade three (he just finished Kindergarten). So, we made the leap and listed our townhome.
The good news is that it sold in a day – with three offers which created a bidding war. The bad news, we didn’t have anywhere to move to! The market in our area dictated this plan of attack as places for sale were going into multiplle offers and if you had “subject to sale of our place” in your offer, you might as well not even bother.
Long story short after a few panic attacks from me and some serious market stalking, we purchased the above home which met most things on our wish list. We did have to compromise on a few things but we ended up with a few bonus things that more than made up for it.
We take possession this Saturday! I couldn’t wait to share with you all though so here are the photos from the listing (as we saw it). I also put together a little floor plan of each level. They won’t be completely accurate as I was going off memory and the specs on the listing sheet, but you will get the idea I’m sure!
Main level:
entry
living room
dining/living room
dining room
kitchen – what will Chef Kev dream up here?
kitchen/family room
family room
(future) playroom!
powder room
laundry
Here is the main floor layout to give you an idea of where these spaces are in relation to one another…
top level:
looking down towards the front entry
master bedroom
master bathroom
the other two bedrooms (Chace’s and a spare – TBD which is which!). We’re going to let Chace choose on moving day.
“Bonus room” – future craft room/office area
top floor bathroom
top floor floorplan…
basement/lower level
Down here is where we encountered one of the ‘compromises’ as mentioned above. Part of the basement is a suite which we were not looking for. However, we decided since we have more than enough space at the moment, we will leave it ‘as is’ for now and renovate in the future to make it our dream recreation room space – complete with wet bar and a bedroom/bathroom on that level. The income from the suite will allow us to do some of the updates a little sooner than we otherwise would have been able to.
First up, the current recreation room (on our side)…
And here is the suite which consists of a living space, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom (I don’t have a photo of the kitchen though).
Here is the baseement floor plan to help you visualize how it all works together…
Last but not least, our backyard. This was another area where we had to compromise. We had dreams of a large backyard but reality told us that the house we wanted, with a big yard, was not in our budget. The fact that this particular house had been nicely updated, was in a great neighbourhood, backed onto a greenbelt and (total bonus) was only a few houses away from the elementary school that Chace will attend made us decide this was the one.
Oh, and did I mentinon that the school is adjacent to a huge park which has an awesome playground and walking trails. We figured our ‘yard’ was steps away so we were covered.
We have big plans for this small space. For the whole house actually. But, we will save and tackle each project as our budget permits and I will happily post about the journey here if you’d like to follow along 🙂
the backyard…
It was time to plant our herb garden for the season and this year I decided to shake things up a bit. I usually plant them in three hanging planters that my dad built (and I refinished), however they didn’t always thrive quite as well as I’d hoped. The herbs always grew, but didn’t always regenerate as fast as we’d like, which had us purchasing fresh herbs at the grocery store again from time-to-time (kind of defeats the purpose right)!?
Anyway, last year there was one sage plant still alive come Spring so I took it out and put it in our large garden bed ‘just because’. Well, it went crazy and grew, and grew, and grew! So, a seed was planted (pun intended). This year I thought I’d put the herb garden into my existing large garden bed and see what happened.
Here is how the garden looked in it’s current state a few days ago (not the nicest weather lately as you can see).
We are in a townhouse so have the typical small backyard space that townhouses offer. Our garden area was predetermined when we moved in and our small strip of grass (that would not grow) was replaced by building out our deck to meet the garden retaining wall (read more about that here).
The garden itself is quite large and I’ve been working on filling it up over the six and a half years we’ve been here.
Here are the remnants from last year’s hanging planter herb garden. I needed to address this too (which I had a plan for). Dried sticks anyone? They go great on roast chicken…
But before I could tackle any of my new planting, I had a few issues. First, this…
WEEDS. A lot of them.
Ugh. Secondly, I needed to relocate some plants and ditch one altogether (a fledgling patch of ground cover). Here is the play-by-play breakdown for you.
As you can see (or not, kind of confusing I know) I relocated two heathers (pink and yellow), dug up the patchy ground cover (white with red ‘x’) and split one decorative grass into three new plants (blue).
And I weeded. And weeded. And weeded.
But then I was left with this nice clearing. Perfect for a little herb garden no?
And Chace supervised.
I figured out the placement of the herbs by first arranging them while still in their pots. Much easier to try out different layouts this way!
I also have two basil plants that can’t go in the ground yet as it still gets too cold at night (another month or so and we should be fine) but I kept them in mind too when figuring out my spacing. I also checked the height forecast of each one so that I didn’t put ones that were going to grow 20″ tall in the front. I wanted to make sure that accessibility was going to be possible since we’ll be in and out of this little section all summer.
Once happy with the placement, I planted them.
Chef Kev doesn’t need an identification marker, but I’m much less savvy so they are for me. You only have to bring back parsley once when the chef asks for cilantro to determine that cheat sheets for the culinary impaired are a-okay.
I’d love to get some pretty stakes like any of the ones seen here. I love the idea of the identifying rocks too! Future DIY :).
The nice thing about the herbs’ placement is that they are located straight out from the sliding doors. Really accesible.
I also took a moment to wrangle in the peony that I bought last year. It’s really shot up so I had to stake it and give it some support. As you can see it’s really close to blooming. I can’t wait!
Okay, so with that done I turned my attention to my now-empty black hanging planter boxes. Again, because we are in a townhouse, we have limits about what we can change and not change. We can’t change the ugly cement wall.
However, I CAN purchase some trailing succulents that will grow and spill over the sides of the planter while blooming, creating a pretty cascading display of colour!
I decided succulents were the way to go as these planters dry out SO fast in the summer and are in direct sunlight. The succulents actually want to dry out between waterings. Works for me! Especially since I get lazy with my watering regime.
The names of these guys are “Portulaca”. They obviously haven’t grown yet so aren’t cascading but give them time :). I also put in a few flowers called “Celosia” (you can see them peeking out in the last photo above (red and yellow). They aren’t succulents, but Chace saw them at the nursery and wanted to get them as they looked “like fuzzy feathers”. How could I say no? And, as it turns out, they offer a nice contrast in the planter.
And lastly, I topped up the soil (I had picked up a few bags for my hanging boxes) in my large black planters. I painted these black a few summers ago and they are still holding up well.
I just trimmed back the decorative grasses in them a few weeks ago (hence the little mounds in the middle) but soon they will look like this again (picture was taken last summer and is from this post). See how they grow nice and tall to fill the space between the top and bottom planters? I think that combined with the trailing Portulaca will look amazing.
So, I can be patient. I mean, if I wasn’t, it could still look like it did when we moved in…
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| (taken from my office window which overlooks the back area) |
Seriously. YUCK. Sure helps to have a vision doesn’t it!?
What have you all been up to lately? Anyone else slowly ‘opening up’ the outside in preparation for the season? Any other new herb gardens out there?
Come on, spill dill! It’s time thyme. 😉
Ah yes, Spring is here. Now doesn’t this image just scream “Spriiinnnng!”
No? I agree. It screams “mama’s been kinda busy”, actually if it were screaming it would be more like “MAMMA’S BEEN KINDA BUSY!” but I don’t like to yell. What you are looking at here are the remnants of my Christmas planter (I didn’t blog about it this year but it looked basically like this). Now, in my defense this is from about a month ago (so late March isn’t too bad is it)? Okay, it is.
Chace and I set out to give this planter a Spring overhaul. First we removed all the dead foliage and thinned out the branches drastically. Then Chace worked his magic moving the dirt around. Nothing like putting your (almost) four year old to work. And don’t you love the outfit he picked out? Priceless.
Once Chace had filled his time card we turned our attention to the flowers I had purchased. My birthday is mid-March and my sweet coworker bought me a gift card to a garden centre near my office (thanks Sharon)! I picked up these 6 plants on my lunch break a day or two before the big dig.
I’m sorry that I can’t recall the names for all of these but basically I picked up some ground cover, some heather (the purple one), decorative grass, a succulent variety, and some violas.
Then we began planting. I let Chace help by telling me which one he wanted to plant next and I helped chose where to put them.
I tried to place the plants in an arrangement that would add interest from each angle you viewed the planter at. For example, I put the succulent near the side of the planter where the door is as it is small so you may not notice it if tucked in back. I also put the heather to the far right as it is large and colourful so adds a nice ‘frame’. I put the grass near the succulent as I loved the play of texture. And the ground cover and flowers I tucked throughout to add diversity and interest.
Then my helper cleaned up. If anyone is looking, he charges $10/hr. All calls go through his momager.
This angle makes him look so tall!
Speaking of angle, this one here had a good one. She did nothing but look at me like this and try to get me to throw her ball for her. Get to work Belle. Shameless.
Once we were all done we had a planter that was ready to start growing. Now it feels like Spring!
As mentioned, I did this about a month ago and grow she did! Here is how she was looking last night when I snapped a few quick pics…
The flowers are loving their new homes and I am loving the colour and life.
This succulent is just so succulent. Sorry, had to be said.
Well, that put a little spring in my step – har har. There is something so refreshing about flourishing flowers. Gotta love ’em.
And the planter-o-shame is but a distant memory (albeit one with photographic evidence).
What about you guys? Get up to any spring cleaning inside or out? I love Spring cleaning/organizing. I get a real itch this time of the year. Nothing is safe. I’m talking to you garage. You’ve been warned.
We had some people over for a BBQ recently and decided to take the opportunity to liven up the deck a bit. Make it a bit more cosy and pretty (Yipeeeee!).
After a particularly rainy westcoast Spring and start to Summer our deck wasn’t really in it’s finest form. A bit too grungy, a bit too dirty and way too drab.
It was like wood invited wood over and threw a wood party. And then mildew and moss showed up and crashed that party…
So after some fantastic deck scrubbing by Chef Kev and some decorating by yours truly we were ready to have some friends over to our ‘new’ cleaner, brighter deck.
The biggest impact was made from our new outdoor rug. (We got it at Canadian Tire for those interested).
Hanging right above that is the chandelier I refinished last summer. It ties in nicely.
Chef Kev and Mini Chef Kev have their own BBQ areas.
Here is the view as you step out onto the deck. You can see the planters I redid last summer along the right hand side. As well as the herb gardens I refinished last year hanging above them.
You can see how much cleaner the deck is above. And the storage bins below now shine. Ahhhh….
On the table are a few candles and hanging from the umbrella is my favourite funky orb tealight holder.
And what is a BBQ without tiki torches!? I got these from Candian Tire as well, and love the dark espresso finish and chevron inspired weave.
So that is it! A refreshed deck that is oh-so-refreshing to relax in. I love it out here so much that I might actually be sitting here right now writing this blog post. Yup. I am. 🙂
Have a great long weekend everyone! I hope the time off finds you on a deck with a nice cold beverage in hand.
Hello
I'm Elaine. A graphic designer, mommy, wife and blogger. I have trouble sitting still and am always looking for a project. Follow along as I post about life – in a pretty and creative way of course.