Happy House-i-versary!

My love and I bought our first house last year.  On this, our happy housiversary, I wanted to share how we have been doing!

This is our wonderful little fixer upper.  Being a young couple and not wanting to be house poor, we waited for the best deal we could find.  We actually had put an offer on another house, but the inspector found an attic of black mold...so that didn't pan out.  If you are shopping for your first home, the inspector is the best money you'll spend!  Our guy is nicknamed Dan the Deal Breaker 😝

Well, every time a door shuts, you are guided down your path to the next opportunity!

The problem with shopping for a home is trying to ignore what it looks like "now" and picturing what it will look like "then."  It took a lot of before and after pictures on Pinterest to convince me I could make a house a home.

That's why I made sure to take a lot of pictures of our house.  I want chronicle what a young couple can do with some inspiration, elbow grease, and quite frankly, what we have discovered is DIY vs D-I-Don't.

The first thing that jumped out about this house was the crappy yard.  It was in SUCH bad shape. But the house was in good shape, and we could fix a yard! And the price right, and you can't really fix that!  So, get house, fix yard.

 "Just water it, it will come back."  That's what everyone told us.  The problem is, the yard was 75% dandelions, 10% other weeds, 5% fungus, 5% holes, 4% prior owner dog poo, and 1% grass, with 50% of that grass being quack grass.

Ripping out the dead arborvitae. Nothing but weeds!

We knew that one of the first projects we wanted to tackle was the yard.  Just so you know, yards are totally DIY!  We rented a rear tine tiller from Home Depot and got to work.

We should have done some kind of weed killer before we tilled.  We know that for next time and now you know for first time!  Anyway, the house already looked better just with a tilled yard!

That line of needles if our water line.  Call before you dig!

We tilled and raked to level out the yard.  Then we put down seed.  I didn't think it would work but it did.

Now we have the best lawn in the neighborhood!

Next step is to clean up the borders! But, that is for another post!