We're Renovating Our Front Yard!

There's been a lot of talking behind the scenes, but I wanted to make it official on the blog. For those who have been following me on Instagram, you already know the project that has been in the works for some time now. My family and I are officially renovating our front yard as I am writing this blog post. One thing that I wanted to note was how our front yard was due for a reno for some time now. 25 years ago, my parents bought the current house that they live in as of right now. As the house ages, it comes with a lot of fixes and replacements. The front yard being one of them.

The original front yard:

We've been discussing and brainstorming the idea of wanting to redo the front yard for years now. But finally after planning, sketching, and budgeting the idea of doing a renovation for our front yard, it is so great for me to say that the renovation has already started.

So what now?

Well since the time I announced it on Instagram to now, the demo process of the drive way along with the front doorstep has been completed. This project is going to be a 3-part project that must be done in chronological order. The parts are:

1. Driveway/Front doorstep

2. House column tiles

3. Front yard garden

Potential front yard sketch up:

Judging from pacing of how things are right now, we are expecting for the house to be done by May 2023. Hopefully with the weird random drops of rain that have been occuring here and there in the Bay Area, it does not push us too far back behind schedule.

As of right now, as I am typing this, the pavement of the house has been completed and we are working on the tiling of the house. That is gonna take a approximately 2 weeks to get done. The downside of that is, the warehouse that shipped us the tile, sent us less of what we order plus majority of the tile was damaged during shipping. Luckily, they were nice enough to ship us more, and we hope to see that arrive by early April.

Taking on a big project

Tackling a large scale project like this can be scary/stressful. But sometimes in order for you to accomplish something big in your life, you kinda have to step out of your comfort zone and see yourself through it to learn.

Therefore when walking into this project with my mom, I wanted to make sure some of the techniques that we've learned from the past, we implement also to this project. It wasn't long ago when my mom did the renovations of our bathrooms throughout the house. With the techniques we learned to plan and excute that bathroom perfectly, we wanted to make sure we know what skills worked and what didn't.

Along with purchasing tiling and pavement for the front yard, my mom and I have been doing a scavenger hunt to find some new plants to add to the front. Luckily, my mom was able to find a seller on Facebook market that was able to sell us two Japanese dwarf maple trees for the front yard. Orignally, we were going to have one. If you already know my story based on my Instagram story, you already heard me talk about the incident with the first maple tree.

To summarize it, our gardener stopped by our house a cut the Japanese Maple tree 50% of it off that ruined to whole look to it. The orignal seller felt bad for us therefore, allowed us to get a different one for a better deal.

To sum it up

There is still a lot of finish here and it does not stop with the pavement. I am so excited to see the final product of how the house looks like at the end. Unfortunately since I will be back down in SoCal again to wrap up the last few months of college, I won't be able to see the process of the front yard all the way to the end. Therfore the next time I come back up to the Bay Area, the project will be done by then.

I can't wait to see how that will be when I return. And until then, stay up to date with me on social media to see what is going on with my life along with this project.