Yard renovation complete!

A month ago, I contacted a local landscaper to talk about getting our yard looking nice. Because it looked terrible.

The lemon tree had died, and was now just a scrubby bunch of spiky shoots. There was no grass, only weeds and dirt. There were soccer balls everywhere, and a big ugly shed, and a few bushes we planted a few years ago when we put in the patio. There was also a chunk of sidewalk from when a house used to be in our yard. (Well, I mean, it wasn’t our yard then, but there used to be a house between ours and our neighbor’s, but it was torn down at some point and now we have side yards.)

Before: (this is embarrassing)

Anyway, they ripped up the sidewalk chunk, removed the lemon scraggle, leveled the yard (including the unsightly mound in the corner that was made up of the dirt we excavated for the patio), squared off the patio, cleared out the weeds, planted plants, mulched, put gravel and sand down, moved the shed, and finally placed artificial turf down.

Seventeen years ago, when we bought our house, we planted a tiny tree and had a pretty nice grass lawn. Since then, the tree grew 20+ feet, we got a dog and three kids, and bamboo grew up from the neighbor’s yard. So it’s nice and shady, but not exactly conducive to grass growing. Hence the artificial turf.

LOOK AT THE GLORIOUS AFTERS!

The boys like it too. 😀

Oh, I have to do one of these fun sliders:

IKEA to the rescue!

When Kristina was visiting, Mary Catherine came over to consult with her on the mess that is my house. After looking at my teeny-tiny closet that was stuffed full and the two random dressers stuffed full and covered in more stuff (so much stuff!) Mary Catherine declared that I needed to get rid of the dressers and get a wardrobe instead.

Mismatched ugly dressers

Tiny closet

I loved this idea and hopped on the IKEA website and planned and eventually ordered a PAX wardrobe.

The space I had to work with was just about 66″ wide, and I was able to pretty much fill that area perfectly!

So what I needed from this wardrobe was lots of hanging room (well, more than the 25″ I had in my closet) and more drawer space than I had in my two dressers. That seems like a lot, but I was able to accomplish it with the use of pull out baskets and shelves. The fact that I was working with the 93″ tall PAX frames helped a lot.

(Also I didn’t realize how tall 93″ is. It’s TALL.)

Here’s what I planned on the IKEA website and how it turned out IRL:

Doors open:

Doors closed:

I’m especially excited about the mirrored door. It’s the only full-length mirror in the house! Up until now I had to carefully balance my phone on the mantle and take a picture of myself if I wanted to see what an outfit looked like.

Putting it all together wasn’t easy but it wasn’t too bad either. Probably the worst part was just the sheer size of the thing and the lack of space in the room to put it together. But it all worked out in the end, with help from Linus and George.

Oh, and my old tiny closet? I got a shoe rack that basically takes up all of the closet floor space and then got some hanging cubes for now to put fabric in. It’s a temporary solution until I can get built-in shelves.