Green with Envy

The weather was fabulous this past weekend. D and I were outdoors for most of  it, camping in Fort Langley, relaxing at Cultas Lake and walking around our current neighbourhood in the evenings. Since we bought the bungalow we are finding ourselves taking note and becoming more and more envious of other people's yards.  We now seem pay attention to different types of flower beds, fence styles and house colour schemes. Gah, that last sentence makes me feel really old! We can't wait to start getting our hands dirty (pun intended) on the outside of 9808.

In it's current state the outside space at the bungalow is definitely green....but grossly overgrown, neglected, and just plain miserable looking. 

The worst of the mess is luckily hidden behind the house. The junk pile below, we believe used to be some type of carport. I'm assuming the owners tore it down with plans to possibly build something new and just didn't get around to doing any more work. Right now it's kind of a guessing game as to whether all of the garbage and junk will be cleared out before possession day. Our realtor thinks we shouldn't hold our breaths and to plan on renting a dumpster along with our moving truck. We will have to wait and see... 

That random appliance in the photo below is a weird sink/fridge/hotplate unit. Never seen one before and don't plan on keeping it. Maybe it will go on Craigslist if it's still there when we move in.

Saying that though....the current owners did offer to remove the six still standing steel posts for us. We are assuming  they only want to do this supposed kind act so they can sell them for extra cash. The last time we drove by they were still there, so again we will have to wait on see what is left behind and what's not. The less we have to haul away the better.

One of the first things we need to do on arrival to our new abode is build a garage. If you squint your eyes and use your imagination you can picture a fancy new double garage in this spot.

I was debating posting these outdoor before pics because the place is such a mess but having really bad before photos will make ANYTHING we do a ginormous improvement!

We plan to tackle the yard and outside space in phases:

1. General yard clean up and garbage removal. Basically clean out all of the left behind junk and de-weed around the house.
2. Remove chain link fence. As I mentioned here, we don't have any animals that need to be contained within our yard so the horrid fence needs to go.
3. Build garage. In order to do this we need to move the shed over and re-cement the current slab to make it bigger. As we will already be paying for the cement load fee we are also hoping to pour a small patio next to the garage on the left side of the house.
4. Transplant hydrangea bush.  Thinking of putting it somewhere along the left side of the property. I need to find out when the best time of the year is to disturb it from it's current resting place first.
5. Spruce up flowers beds along front of  house. 
6. Freshen up front porch. 
7. Plant a Japanese Maple. Again hopefully along the left side of the yard.
8. Fence or hedge along  front. We eventually need to dig out or bury the stumps that are left over from the old hedging, but right now they don't really bother me. 
9. Repaint house. Planning for summer of 2013.
10. Redo deck. Definitely in the long term plans.

There is a ton of  more work that needs to be done eventually to the outside, but right now a list of ten projects, some big some not as big, seems plenty enough to get started!