Jim Goings

The word “landscaping” makes me think of something artfully done by a skilled professional.  Perhaps a better word for what we did in our front yard is “yard makeover”.  We pruned the trees and covered the gnarled roots with weed barrier fabric and bark dust.  We also created some bordered areas and used weed barrier and bark dust there as well.  The biggest part of the job was choosing plants and digging holes for them.  The area in front of the house is pretty much clay, but we filled in the area around the plants with dirt and new soil.  Hopefully the plants will survive.  I have my doubts.

Whether the plants live or die, the front yard looks much better!  I need to add some seed and fertilizer to the lawn, but otherwise I think it’s in good shape.

We planted a few varieties of plants.  The ones flanking in the top of the photo are Pieris Japonica (Purity Pieris).  The one in the middle top is a Winter Daphne.  The other three are varieties of Hellebore.  They are all flowering evergreens, so they should look great all year.  You can see all of the plants close up on Flickr.

We were going to plant a couple of plants here next to the big tree as the lawn doesn’t grow well here due to the massive roots.  However, I dug right through the Comast cable.  Luckily, we don’t use Comcast, so it wasn’t a problem!  I decided to stop digging anyway so I didn’t cut through the Verizon FIOS line.  Well, I still managed to screw up and drove a stake through the FIOS fiber, killing our phone, Internet, and TV.  I called Verizon immediately and told them what happened.  They laughed (and probably pointed), but were very kind and sent out a tech the very next morning.  He installed a new fiber line on top of the lawn marked with yellow caution tape.  We were back up and running in no time!   They are supposed to send a seperate crew out to bury a new line.  They never said how much this would cost me (if anything)… I hope they tell me beforehand.  I’m half-expecting some ridiculous charge on my next bill.

In the showdown of all showdowns, we took on our back yard and kicked it’s butt!   I hired Mark to come over and help us.   First up was a trip to the dump where we unloaded a van full of crap we had sitting around in the yard.  Then, Mark ran the rototiller most of the day while I trimmed the trees – all 4 of them.  Mark ended up tilling about half of the yard which is awesome.  We placed some edging and moved some of the rocks into the border areas.  Of course, the rocks were from the other half of the yard where we dug them up a few weeks ago.  They were all muddy, so we spend about 2 hours washing rocks.  Yes, we washed rocks.  The results are great, but we have a long way to go.

Mark finishing up the tilling.  Now we have a mostly level yard ready for sod!

We covered the tilled earth with plastic to prevent anything from growing.  In a few weeks we’ll plant sod.

I cut down the tree what was growing in the middle of the two pine trees shown here.  I also pruned the weird tree you can just see on the far right.

If you look towards the house, you can see a huge pile of limbs and leaves from the maple tree sitting in front of the window.  The foreground shows some of the trimmings from the other trees.

We finally decided to get rid of the funky green on the front of our house.  Here’s a before picture from 2005:

Mmmm green!  Here’s another picture that shows the red front door and the green door that goes into the garage.

We had to a lot of work on the outside of our home.

• Removed leaves from gutters (around entire house)
• Power washed the gutters (inside and out)
• Spray painted gutters with a gloss enamel
• Removed moss from roof – what a freaking pain in the butt!
• Power washed driveway – 2 inch strips at a time!
• Painted garage door and house trim ultra pure white
• Filled in all cracks in cedar siding with wood putty and sanded it
• Painted house a light sand color that matches the sand colored stones
• Painted door terracotta to match bricks
• Replaced globe porch light with new, more attractive one
• Cleaned and painted the wrought iron railing
• Removed, cleaned, and painted gutter drain spout with white gloss enamel

Luckily Megan and Kelly volunteered to help out on Saturday.  We put in about 7 hours of work on Saturday and Beck and I put in another 8 hours on Sunday finishing up.

Notice that both doors are the same color now!   The new colors are much brighter and make the house less gloomy.  Two neighbors and have stopped by to say how much they really like it!

Oooh Ahhh, originally uploaded by jimgoings.

Our new deck is finally completed! It turned out great! The deck is made of Westar composite material and the railing and lattice is vinyl. 100% maintenance free deck. No sanding or staining! The deck will fade a little in the first couple months of sun, but after that it stays the same for many years. The under side of the deck is rain proof with a long lasting plastic material as well. We also got a new spa, new furnace, and a new A/C unit. You can see the pictures of our remodeling project on flickr.

Whacka-chicka-bow-now… the spa is here and we’ve used it twice. No, not *used* it, just used it. Get your mind out of the gutter! It’s very nice and relaxing and fits perfectly under our new deck. The deck isn’t quite finished yet, so pictures will have to wait until next week. The new AC, Furnace, and water heater are all welcome improvements to the Goings house as well.

Oh yeah… Happy Birthday Kyle! Kyle’s real birthday was a few days ago, but we went to his party earlier this evening. He’s 30 years old and already balding like he’s 50. Way to go!