We have some rose bushes on the side of our house, and I frequently curse how high maintenance they are (meaning, they actually have to be watered and pruned more than once a month). They’re pretty in theory, but they’re quite a pain to take care of for someone who has a thumb black enough to kill succulents, and more often than not they just look kind of sad. I consider just chopping them down and calling it a day on a very regular basis.

But then…they do this.

 

And it’s really hard to remember why I hate them so much.

Do you have any plants that you have a love/hate relationship with?

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This is one of those projects that was definitely not on our list of things to complete anytime soon. Our back door wasn’t anything special, but it certainly wasn’t bad enough to actively bother us, and we really had no plans to change anything about it anytime soon. Why would we, when we have so many other problem areas that need fixing first?

Well, all that changed with Corey’s parents decided to buy a new back door and offered us their old one. Theirs has a much larger window (which is exactly what we eventually wanted), so we figured why the hell not?

We got the door from them quite a while ago and it’s just been sitting in our garage – like I said, it wasn’t high on the priority list. But this weekend we finally decided it was time to get it done, so we ran to Lowe’s, grabbed some paint, and got to work.

We decided to go with black for the inside and yellow for the outside. We already had some yellow paint from doing our front door last year, so it was a pretty easy (and cheap) decision to make. We were originally going to go with white for the interior, but at the last minute Corey decided that he wanted to try something new and go for black. I’d been trying to talk him into a black door for a while so I of course jumped at the chance to get my way!

Of course, we ran into a small problem with the yellow side of the door. It’s impossible to tell in the photo, but the coverage was awful. We used up the last bit of yellow paint that we had and we still needed at least one (possibly two) more coats before it looked anywhere near okay.

So, at the last minute we decided to scrap our plans for a yellow back door and go with black on both sides. It was cheaper (we already had the black paint and wouldn’t need to buy any more yellow) and had the added benefit of being MUCH better at hiding dirt. Our dogs are constantly jumping and scratching at the back door, so we knew yellow was going to look pretty grimy all of the time. Hopefully the black will hide the dirt a bit better!

I painted the door on Saturday, and once it was dry it was time to hang it and apply the window film. Our old door had an attachment with blinds in the window, but we hoped for something a little prettier this time around, and we’d really like a full view of the backyard from the dining room. Since the new glass is double-paned, we’re hoping that with some solar-blocking window film it will be enough to keep our dining room from heating up. But you know we’ll let you know if it doesn’t work out!

To install the window film, we just followed the directions in the package. It sounds simple because it was! It was a two-person job for sure, but it wasn’t nearly the nightmare that I’ve heard window film can be. Just clean, spray, attach, and squeegee out the bubbles!

Installing the door was very easy and quick. All we did was pull out the pins from the hinges and pull the old door off…

…then we paused for a minute to watch the dogs play as they dashed outside to wrestle. Ranger is just now starting to get comfortable enough with Hadley to actually play with her (he’s either been exerting his dominance or ignoring her since she got here a month ago), so it was a bit heart-warming to watch them all play together. Or, at least, to watch Ranger and Hadley play while Cullen ran in circles around them and barked.

Once we got back to work, all there was left to do was transfer the old hinges to the new door (Corey measured and had to make new holes for the hinges since the doors didn’t have hardware in the exact same spots)…

…then we just lined up the hinges and replaced the pins and we were good to go!

And just like that, we’ve got a shiny new door in our dining room! This door makes a much bigger impact to the room as a whole and I feel like it actually adds to the room rather than just being a boring old door. I’m always a fan of a pop of black, and that larger window makes me swoon!

The view from the outside is a bit better too!

It still looks a little silly since the color of our house and trim is not at all something that we would have ever chosen (and it doesn’t exactly go well with the black!) but this is a major improvement from the previous color, which was exactly the same as the rest of the house.

(Why hello there! This new window film is very reflective in the evenings!)

So that’s our quick and easy back door upgrade that we weren’t planning on, but we’re so glad we did it!

Have you ever done a project you weren’t planning on, only to totally love it? Anyone else do some door replacing this weekend?

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So, I’ve had plans for oh, I don’t know, about a month now to finish up this project and actually share it with you guys. But every time I think I’m almost done, another problem pops up, and I’m finally at the point of throwing my hands in the air and calling it quits.

Don’t you hate it when that happens?

So, I’m sharing this project today even though it is oh-so-far from completion, partially because I’m just sick of waiting around to finish it, and partially just for the sake of keeping it real – things don’t always go perfectly for us, and sometimes we have tiny little projects that we think are no big deal that end up taking us months (and months and months) without ever getting completed.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

Ever since we moved into this house, I’ve absolutely hated the ivy that grows on either side of the back door. It takes over the plants back there, it grows so quickly and so widespread that it seems to be invading every inch of my backyard, and I’ve even seen it try to grow into the house on more than one occasion (I’m not joking).

This ivy was ugly, annoying, and I finally reached my tipping point with it one day this summer, shortly before we left on our cruise. So, I pulled it all up. I had tried this many times before in the year that we’ve lived here, but this time I was determined, so I pulled it up from the roots as well as I could and figured that surely the ivy couldn’t survive how roughly I’d treated it and it wouldn’t grow back.

Hah.

When our vacation was over I came home and stepped outside, only to immediately be assaulted by a mass of ivy that had grown back with a vengeance.

Y’all – that was after a week and a half. SERIOUSLY. It had even grown out into the patio and was threatening to strangle one of our chairs. This stuff was angry.

At this point, I finally decided if I couldn’t get rid of the ivy, I was going to embrace it. It obviously wasn’t going anywhere, so I might as well make it look pretty, right? So, Corey and I headed out to Lowe’s in search of a trellis to give the ivy somewhere productive to grow. We found this great, super cheap wire trellis for about $3.00 a pop, and we figured it was exactly what we needed. We could make it in the exact size and configuration we wanted, and it was way cheaper than the (admittedly prettier, but not adjustable) wooden trellises. Plus, we figured that our ivy was so thick that once it grew up the wall you wouldn’t be able to see the trellis anyways! While we were there, we grabbed a couple of extra little ivy plants so that we could fill in the areas that didn’t already have ivy – the plan was to cover this entire window with a trellis and ivy, as well as a small section on the other side of our back door.

The trellis itself was incredibly easy to install – we just screwed the posts into the wall and wrapped the wire around them in a a grid pattern. In about 20 minutes we were completely done with it!

Annnnnnd….this is where I run out of pictures of the process. Why? Well, when we got to the side of the door with all of the boxwoods, we decided that it was going to be too tough to get the trellis installed and then get the ivy behind the boxwoods (it was all planted in front of the plants, right next to the concrete) without just pulling them up, and we hated them anyways, so we decided to get rid of them. Only…as I finished cutting down the last one and was getting ready to dig up the roots, this happened.

….Yeah. Apparently we had a leak (our sprinkler system controls are right there) and we had no idea. Guess it was a good thing we were digging up the boxwoods? We had to call someone from the company who makes our sprinkler system to come out and fix it (and since it was a Saturday evening we got to pay a super fun “emergency” fee), and we figured that would be the end of our problems.

Yeah right.

About a week later, all of the mud had finally dried out enough for us to deal with it again, so Corey headed outside to dig up all of the roots from the boxwoods so that we could finally get our ivy planted. Since we had completely demolished the ivy that was already planted there in the process of dealing with the first leak (or so we thought) we also picked up a couple more ivy plants, since we had already spent so much time and effort on this project. We weren’t about to give up now!

Well, while Corey was outside digging up roots….another leak happened. I won’t point any fingers or say it was anyone’s fault, but let’s just say I’m pretty sure that leak wasn’t there before Corey started digging. So…we got to put in another emergency call! The guy came out, fixed the leak, and we, once again, thought that was the end of it.

Until I went outside the next morning and found MORE WATER in the hole where the “fixed” leak was. Apparently there was a THIRD LEAK due to an improperly installed faucet on the side of our house. We were determined not to pay any more insane fees, and Corey was pretty sure we could fix this one ourselves, so we had my dad come out to the house and help Corey seal it up (there were two faucets side-by-side, which seemed a bit overkill to us, anyways).

And that’s where we are right now. The hole from the third leak hasn’t been filled in yet because it’s still dripping ever-so-slightly, and we want to make sure to get it completely under control before we fill the hole back in and plant the rest of the ivy. And, yes, I realize that our dog-chewed blinds look completely trashy and ridiculous, we just haven’t gotten around to replacing them yet. Ranger gets a bit…anxious while we’re outside mowing the lawn.

The ivy that we bought from Lowe’s seems to be much more high-maintenance than the stuff we already had growing, and we’re having a hard time getting it to actually…grow. It’s still pretty much the exact same size it was when we planted it about a month ago, but we’re hoping with some patience it will actually start climbing. The ivy that was already there (that we were sure would never come back after that first leak) has started to pop back up, so we plan on trying to transplant it while it’s still manageable enough to move.

On the other side, we’ve got another Lowe’s ivy that isn’t growing, as well as some transplanted ivy that seems to be doing okay. It’s not growing as well as it was before, but it’s also not taking over the little bush (and my chairs) anymore, so I won’t complain.

Another little update back here is that we got rid of the hibiscus trees we picked up on clearance from Lowe’s a few months back. We could never get them to stand up straight, and they required daily watering, or else they got cranky. Frankly, I get along much better with plants that thrive on neglect, so we finally realized that it just wasn’t a good match and decided to replace them. We picked up some little succulents from our local grocery store (hopefully they’ll grow a bit and fill out the planter!) and a sage bush, both of which need lots of sun and very little water – perfect for us!

So, that’s where we are in our backyard right now. It’s still looking like a hot mess, but I have hopes that we’ll get everything sorted out soon and it can start more like a backyard and less like a construction zone. On the bright side, the back patio is much less crowded without those big, imposing boxwoods!

Have you ever had one of those projects that just goes wrong at every turn? Any suggestions on how to make our ivy grow? Anyone else have a million leaks in their yard?

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Can you think of a better way to spend Father’s Day weekend than watching your dad chop down a tree in your backyard?

 

Yeah, me neither.

Confused? Let me explain – this peach tree at the back of our yard had us very excited when we first moved in. It wasn’t looking so hot, but we knew that peach trees were supposed to be pruned back every year, so we hoped that it would grow back in and look a little something like this.

(Source)

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Unfortunately, the longer we lived here the more we realized this guy hadn’t just been pruned back – it was dead as a doornail.

We held out hope for a while that it might miraculously come back to life and turn into the beautiful peach tree of our dreams, but deep down we knew that just wasn’t going to happen. This tree was so dead that we kind of worried if the wind blew the wrong way it might come crashing down.

So, this weekend while we were making Father’s Day lunch for my dad, he headed into the backyard with his trusty chainsaw and got to work.

He had quite an audience out there watching him (we were all fascinated) and pretty soon, our ugly, dead peach tree had been turned into firewood for the winter!

And now, when we look out at our backyard, instead of seeing this…

We see this:

And as soon as we get rid of the old stump, we’ll be able to build a raised garden bed for that area – of course, it’s a bit late in the season for us to actually plant anything, but maybe we can have it done in time for some fall veggies!

On another, much less dead note, see all that beautiful pink on the left side of all these photos? That would be our beautiful line of crepe myrtles that finally bloomed – and they make me so happy!

What were you up to this Father’s Day weekend? Anyone else chop down any trees?

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I have mentioned many, many times here on the blog that I am absolutely awful at keeping plants alive. I’ve killed every plant I’ve ever owned (including succulents, which are notorious for being incredibly easy to keep alive) and I’m pretty convinced that I have a black thumb.

But, for some reason, I keep coming back for more. I can’t help it – plants may not like me but I like them and I’m determined that we’re going to become besties. I’m sure once they get to know me a little better they’ll like me too.

Since I’m so determined, Corey and I hit up Lowe’s this weekend to see if we could find some new plants for our yard. We were looking specifically for some citronella (technically it’s called citrosa, I believe, but it’s basically the same thing) to help keep the mosquitos off of our back patio (my friend Audrey swears by it!) but when we saw the clearance plant section we couldn’t resist looking around.

Half an hour and $30 worth of plants later, we were feeling pretty awesome. We found two braided hibiscus trees for $5 each, a ton of pretty annual flowers that ranged from 50 cents to a buck a piece, a cute hanging plant for $3, and some pretty succulents that were 75% off. All of the plants were looking a bit worse for the wear, but we figured that since we were spending so little on them it wouldn’t be the end of the world if we ended up killing them. Our idea was that this is a good way to get our feet wet in taking care of some more plants without a ton of commitment – since most of the plants we bought are annuals, we’d have to replant them next year anyways.

When we got home we learned our first lesson in gardening – pay attention to how much shade you have in your backyard before you actually buy plants. Most of what we bought are “full sun” plants, meaning they need 6+ hours of direct sunlight every day. The problem? Most of the places we were wanting to plant in are very shaded, thanks to the tons of trees and large rose buses we have in our yard. We managed to find enough sunny spots for what we bought, but we will definitely be buying more shade plants in the future.

We started off with the flower bed – currently all that’s in there are three rose bushes, a crepe myrtle (which we need to transplant – it’s very crowded by the house and a rose bush, which is stunting it’s growth), and some dusty miller. We found a bare patch that gets quite a bit of sunlight and decided to plant some of our flowers there. We also planted some succulents along the back of the fence (they’re supposed to get pretty big, so we’re hoping they grow and cover the whole area behind the fence), and a few other random plants in different patches of the bed depending on how much sunlight they’ll need. They’re all looking kind of sad right now, but we’ll update you as they (hopefully) start to perk up and grow!

(If you look closely, you can see the baby succulents along the fence! This spot gets more sun at different times of the day, it just happened to be shaded when I took the photo.)

The next stop was the area next to our back door. A few weekends ago we pulled up some bushes from that area and were left with a pretty bare little dirt patch. This area will eventually all be turned into a patio, but that won’t be happening for a while, so we figured this was a good spot for some more flowers. Once again, they aren’t looking awesome, but we have faith that with some love they’ll start looking better soon!

We (once again) learned to double check the shade conditions when it came to the hanging plant. It is a “full sun” plant, but the only place we have to hang anything is off the workshop, which is completely shaded most of the time thanks to the second story of our house. So, for now we decided to plop it down on the dead peach tree near the back of the yard – it makes the tree look a little bit less sad and ensures the plant gets plenty of sun. When the tree comes down (soon!) we’ll have to find another place for it, but this works for now!

We put our cute little hibiscus trees on the patio so we can be sure to see them and give them some love every day. They’re looking particularly close to death, but we have high hopes that we can revive them – they’ve already perked up a little bit since we removed all of the dead leaves and gave them plenty of water, so we’ll see how they do!

And, of course, we finally managed to track down some citronella at a local grocery store and put it in a cute $10 pot from Ross. It was very overgrown when we got it and have heard that it’s pretty easy to take care of, so we feel good about this plant for sure! It’s supposed to end up with some pretty purple flowers in the next few weeks, so we’ll keep you posted on that as well!

And with that, we’re starting to feel like our yard might actually look pretty at some point in the future. We’re excited to start working out there and getting our plants to come back to life, and hopefully by next year we will have learned enough about how to take care of things that we can actually buy some more permanent flowers!

Have you been doing any work outside now that the weather is warming up? Anyone else determined to make plants cooperate with you?

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