It’s a jungle out there–and how we tamed it

So excited to start showing you some things we have been busy working on to the outside of our new to us fixer upper house.  Here is new house on the day we closed.  I seriously have to just laugh when I go back and see these pictures.  What in the world were we thinking when we bought this house comes to mind… I think honestly I was just so worried we would be homeless or sleeping in a moving truck on the day the baby was born that I wasn’t even looking at any of it.  Seriously though… I could already imagine the after in my head and knew that we could make it much better – I just don’t think I imagined how long and hard of a journey it would be.

Here’s the back of the house.

We had lived there about a week and finally were able to really assess what was going on outside. 

Bushes and bushes and more bushes… we lost count but I know at one time we counted over 50 in the front, side, and back yard.  All I can figure was there was a 4/$1.00 special and they bought out the nursery.

Yes that is a BUSH turned tree – just wow.  And there were bushes underneath and inside of that massive bush.

Here’s the side yard.  Behind that massive bush (which is actually 4 bushes) was a whole another section of boxwood bushes like on the left – you just couldn’t see them.  We counted over 20 bushes in this one area.

The UPS man met me at the front door just days after moving in and handed me a package.  He said, “I don’t normally say this, but THIS is a package you definitely need…”  LOL!

Yep it was a hedge trimmer!  Ryobi was nice enough to send me a 18v Hedge Trimmer to get to work tackling our jungle.  I love my Ryobi tools and we already had several 18v tools and a 24V weedeater so I knew that this hedge trimmer could do the job.

So here’s the before….

And here’s after trimming like half of the bush off the bushes…

They were so out of control that there was almost more bush on the ground than there was on the bush.  At this point we weren’t sure what we were planning on doing with all of them – we knew that we would eventually remove some of them but needed to see the condition of the rest.

As we trimmed it was more and more obvious that we were not going to be able to salvage them.  We were finding multiple bushes clumped together, and when we trimmed down to where they needed to be we were left with huge bare spots and not very good looking bushes.

This was in the backyard – seriously another tree in the making!

And this was after trimming – oh there is a house back there!

Our Ryobi hedge trimmer did a great job and things were starting to improve.  We took a break to have a baby   and then made another huge change – come back Monday to see the next step.