It’s been awhile!! I’ve been in a blogging slump for sure. Part of it was the craziness of finishing off the school year, and part of it was feeling uninspired to blog. But! The inspiration is returning. I’ve been able to catch up on some of my favorite blogs in the week and a half that I’ve been out of school, so my creative juices are flowing again. In the last post, I mentioned 3 things we were going to be working on: landscaping, garage, and deck staining. We are done with our landscaping plans for this year (I don’t think you are ever actually DONE with landscaping) and our garage is making a lot of great progress!

Landscaping

Here is what our landscaping looked like before we mulched and replaced some bushes. We don’t typically keep a garbage can in the landscaping. This was a work day 🙂

We decided to take out all of the bushes under the garage windows. They look bare in the winter and are overgrown in the summer. We love the boxwoods over by the trash can, so we decided to do more of those. However, we bought really tiny ones because they were less expensive. They will look good in a few years 🙂

You might also notice that we accidentally bought a different color of mulch when we mulched in front of the garage. Ooops!!! The darker stuff has faded and its really not as noticeable as it is in this picture.

Here it is from the other angle

Another big project (for Parker) was burying the downspout. The water shoots out of this one like crazy and drowns the landscaping. We tried putting some rocks here for a few years to route the water, but it didn’t really work. So Parker bored it under the sidewalk. I’m still not sure how he did it, but it seems to be a big improvement.

Here are a few other shots of the mulch. Fresh mulch makes everything look better!

As you can see, the rose bush on the left looks great and has been flowering all season. The one on the right is barely noticeable. You can also see the purple salvia (I think that’s what it is) on the left, but not on the right. What is the deal with that?!?! How can they be so close but not survive the same way? We haven’t pronounced them dead, but they might be by the end of the season.

Give it some time to grow, and I think we will be much happier with it!

Garage

So, I was too scared to show you our garage “befores” in my last post. I’m still scared, but now that we have some progress shots, I feel a little better. Please understand that our garage hasn’t always been this messy. Its never been great, but this is by far the worst it has ever been. Its basically the aftermath of Parker constructing the mudroom (plus not having a place to put things). I was parking in here in the winter of 2015/2016, but then we started the mudroom. Parker bought more tools and cut and sanded lots of things in here, so it just quickly got out of control. I have rarely stepped foot in here in the last year. I’ve been using the front door instead. Here we go. Cover your eyes and look through your hands just in case you can’t handle it.

 

How much judging is happening right now? We deserve it.

Now here is some progress

First, Parker threw tons of stuff away that we didn’t need and probably wouldn’t be worth anything to anybody else either. We took everything else out of the garage and hosed it off (blinds and everything). The empty garage got a good vacuuming with our new garage shop vac. Unfortunately, we can’t leave everything on the driveway while Parker installs the slat wall, so everything had to be put back in and he has to work around it.

He’s pretty close to done with this wall now. Then he will move on to the window wall. Whatever is left will be used on the drywall on the left wall of the garage. We were originally going to tear out the drywall and do slat wall on the whole thing, but it just seemed like a waste of energy and money. We may do it eventually, but we are going to see how we live with the other two walls first.

I think we are really going to like it. This is our latest inspiration picture:

So after the slat wall, we still have some work to do. Parker plans to build a work bench on wheels, and we will probably slide some storage under there like in the picture. Hopefully we won’t have to hang upper storage. The idea is for the slat wall to be enough. He’s also going to build a little outdoor locker type thing (a bench and a couple of hooks) since our mudroom is too pretty for actual mud ;). But really, most of the time his work clothes are far too dirty to bring in the house. So he can hang them out here and have an actual spot for his work boots instead of them sitting in front of the garage stairs.

I’ll leave you with one more picture. While cleaning out the garage, we found and hung this housewarming gift from five and a half years ago.

So leave me some feedback! Let me know what you think!!

Jalene