Dining Room + Yard Progress

It's been pretty chaotic around here lately. The dining room is 90% completed, I'm just waiting on some art and bamboo blinds before I can stage it and share the finished product. (If you're dying for a sneak peak, I shared one in my Fall Home Tour).

The pass through (or knick-knack shelf as I call it) has been boxed, plastered and painted. It makes such a huge difference to the space.

We are also nearing completion on our massive backyard reno. If you've been following my Instagram Stories you'll have witnessed my excitement when all the plantings were delivered!

Our house sits on seven tenths of an acre, which is a huge lot where we live in the suburbs. And while the large lot is one of the reasons we fell in love with the house, it needed a ton of work.

When we originally moved in, we immediately had 11 trees cut down and stumped. Because (look above!) it was a jungle out there!  However, the removal of these trees just highlighted the poor state of the yard and all the rocks and uneven surfaces. Frankly, it hasn't been safe for our son to run around out there without fear of tripping and badly injuring himself.

There was two huge gardens plus another bed along the house wall - way too much garden for me to be able to take care of. This massive garden (below) is being ripped out and grass planted in its place. Not only will it be less work for me but it will mean more lawn for the boys to run around!

The grass never grew right because all the trees sucked every last nutrient out of the soil. There was holes, rocks and major dips everywhere along the landscape plus a massive rock wall along one side.

So, we have embarked on a complete renovation of the space to make it useable (and safe!). We started by removing ANOTHER 11 trees.

There's nothing like trees dangling over your house to scare the crap out of you.

Along with the tree removal, the entire backyard has now been graded, new plantings installed, new loam spread and now we are just waiting on irrigation and hydroseed!

We decided it would make sense to also tackle the front yard while we were at it.

A lot of the old shrubs have been ripped out and replaced with hydrangeas and boxwoods. I'm so excited to share the finished yard with you...including nice green grass that we've never had!! The dining room reveal will be up on the blog this Friday, so be sure to come back to check it out!