I will say that our house was very much "move in ready". Whoever flipped it did a great job and as much as we had been wanting to have a semi fixer, I am SO happy we didn't have to do much with the inside other than decorating! The one place the flipper didn't do such a good job was the backyard. It was overgrown (we live next door to an urban jungle....seriously), there was no outdoor seating area, moss was growing instead of grass and there was a gigantic jungle gym smack in the middle of the yard. I think for most people the play area would be a plus but for us singleton's we wanted it gone. I had dreams of laying on a lounger sipping fruity frozen drinks viewing my lush green grass - needless to say we had A LOT to do. Here is a picture of the play set:
It's hard to tell but the pit had wood chips in it and the set was actually cemented in. We had no idea how we were going to get this monstrosity out and where we were going to haul it. I started researching on Craigslist and sure enough these babies were going for big bucks, sweet! We ended up selling it on CL for $300! A family came and hauled it, we didn't even need to lift a finger - things were looking good! After the pit was gone we called up our buddy Nate (fun fact - Nate also married us!) and he helped Cayce move all the railroad ties that bordered the play set to the edge of the yard - this simple solution really blocked off the edges and started to give a nice finished look!
The next problem we had to tackle was the giant pit. It was HUGE, I'm not sure if the pictures really portray how large it was - it was about 700 sq ft, almost as big as our first apartment! The problem with the pit was there were layers - we had the earth itself, a layer of landscaping fabric, more earth, another layer of landscaping fabric, more earth with millions of over grown tree roots (did I mention we lived in an urban jungle???) and then the wood chips. We thought about trying to grow grass directly over the wood chips but with a little research realized that wasn't doable as the wood chips would suck all the good stuff from the ground to decompose - ugh! Lucky for us my parents were out visiting and we put them to work, decided to tackle thalong with my brother and Cayce's friend Greg, here is us hard at work:
Ok, this picture isn't entirely accurate. I did help out with the project but this just happens to be the only picture captured that day!
I'll be back for more on how we finished up the yard in my next post!
