For a number of years, Ted and I have talked about updating our house and yard. It’s been over 20 years since our last major update, and we’re getting tired of looking at the same old stuff–not to mention that it’s all aging. We decided that 2022 would be the year we’d actually make the update happen. As the song goes, it was time for a little less talk and a lot more action. We decided that, since it was spring, we’d start outdoors so those jobs could be done in nicer weather.

We began by shopping for exterior doors in April. Ours were installed in the mid-1990s and they showed all those years of weathering. We shopped and made our selections, then ordered doors on April 29. The doors arrived only (?) five months later, in time to be installed September 26-27. We planned to re-install our old screen/storm doors because they seemed fine and they fit the new doors. When we saw the new doors being installed, however, it was immediately obvious that the old storm doors would present a very bad look. Check the before (left) and after (right) photos below and you’ll see what I mean. We ordered new storm/screen doors and they were installed on November 29–six months to the day after we ordered the first doors. The pandemic really messed up the supply chains, didn’t it? Not to mention “the Great Retirement” and all the other people (like us) using their “we can’t go anywhere anyway” money to update their homes.

Next, we contacted a company to re-stain our pergola. We’ve stained it ourselves several times in the past and it’s not fun. Now we can afford to have someone else do that crummy (to us) job. We signed a contract for the work in April and, two months later, on June 15, a crew member spent two days pressure washing the pergola. Two more months later, on August 11, a crew of two men spent two more days staining the pergola. It took (again) only (?) four months from the time we signed the contract until the job was finished. The bad news: all summer we sat under the faded pergola. The good news: now it looks fresh instead of faded and we didn’t have to do the crummy (to us) job.

Our final outdoor project was landscaping. We’ve had some struggling bushes for several years. They don’t quite die, but they don’t look good. We decided to meet with a landscape designer to get some better suggestions for hardier plants. For five years, we’ve watched our red-leaved plum bushes struggle to screen our pool (left). The landscape designer suggested fuller, faster-growing viburnum bushes for that area (right).

We had three flowering bushes in front of the house for 13 years, and they started to fail as well. Last year, we pulled the worst-looking bush out; this year, the remaining two bushes looked so bad, we cut them off at the base (left). The landscape designer suggested three English laurel bushes for that location. The arborvitae tree at the left corner of the house doesn’t look bad from the front (left), but the entire back half was dead. That tree has now been replaced with a columnar Norway spruce, complemented by the three new English laurel bushes (right).

For about 35 years, we had a privet hedge for privacy in our back yard. We think it aged out, but whatever the reason, it reached a point where it wasn’t filling out any more and it looked like it was dying. We replaced the privet bushes with arborvitae trees and were pretty satisfied until the middle ones died for the third year in a row (left) and several others were beginning to die. The designer said that arborvitaes aren’t very hardy and that perhaps poor water drainage was contributing to a problem in the middle of the hedge. He suggested raising the bed of the hedge and replacing the arborvitaes with hardier boxwoods, so we did (right).

None of the new bushes/trees looks great yet–or even much different than their dying/dead predecessors. Why? Because we contracted with the nursery for the new plants in mid-July, and they didn’t have time to plant them until December 8-9–five months later. All of the new plants were put into the ground in their dormant state, and we’re looking forward to them greening up in a few months.

The talk is finished and the action has begun.