Yard Makeover for Free.

 

As mom said in her post, we worked on cleaning up and fixing up her backyard and house while she was gone.  Originally  part of her tree had fallen down and we were just going to cut it up but then we decided while she was gone we would get a bunch more done.

Here is the half of the apple tree that had fallen:

 

Here’s a picture of my brother starting on the tree.  Mom has also wanted to get her fence painted for a long time but just never got around to it. Note the lovely color it is in the background. We forgot to take a picture of it, but in the back corner was an old metal shed she wanted taken down and sent to the metal recycling place. The guys got it down first before working on the tree. 

 Once the tree was down then they had to cut up the branches.  

 

and there were a lot of apples to pick. The kids all got together and picked and picked apples.

 

They even got Jack in on the work and he was so proud of himself! Believe it or not we only got about one full box of apples, but that’s been enough to make applesauce, apple butter and dried apples. Recipes will come later. 

 

Then we raked a lot of dead apples and branches.

 

 

 

Then Mike spent about 8-10 hours cleaning the siding on mom’s house with bleach. You can see the before and after. On the left side of the photo is the "after" he cleaned and right is a section he hadn’t cleaned yet (the "before"). You can see a rough diagonal line between the sections. It doesn’t look as bad on the picture as it did in real life. The problem with Kansas is that we have very high heat and humidity and the mildew just loves metal siding.  As you can see, Mike didn’t mind doing it all. (Ok, about hour 10 he was getting a little tired. 🙂

 

 

Then I went over 3 days and painted the fence for her. I was going to mix a bunch of brown and white paint leftovers mom and I had to try and get enough tan to cover her entire fence and shed.

Honestly, I hate mixing paint and really wanted to just find some at the recycling center or on discount at  Lowe’s already mixed up. Well, I looked and looked at the recycle center for some for free but they didn’t have any. I then went to Lowe’s three times to see if they had any mis-mixes and on the last trip there, low and behold, they had 5 gallons and it was the perfect shade!! It was only $32! I was able to use a Swagbucks gift card so that was even better because it was free! I grabbed it up and the kids and I went over to paint. 

Since it had been over 100 all week, we had to go in the mornings. We went over 2 mornings and then my oldest and I went one night and got it all finished. Doesn’t it look so much better!

 

 

Here’s the before and after. I took an old bench I had and put some black paint on it. Then I put some flowers in her planters and set them on the slab where the old metal shed used to be. 

Her house looks almost like it had been painted after Mike scrubbed it. We found Outdoor Bleach and used that to clean it. It worked great! We just put it in a sprayer, sprayed it on, let it sit a few minutes and then scrubbed and rinsed. I forgot to get an "after" picture of the house but it does look nice.  

Tawra

P.S. The pictures don’t show how really bad the siding was. When Mike was done with it, my neighbor thought they had painted the house because it was such a big change.

I bought a cheery vinyl tablecloth at Jo Ann Fabrics for 50 cents that I will sew into some pillows for the bench, which will add some color to the corner. 

I do have some pretty sweet and wonderful kids/grandkids. Love you all.

Thanks again guys,

Jill (Mum, Nan)