In the almost eight years we've been living in this house, we've renovated the interior top to bottom. That's three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, living room, dining room, laundry room, basement, and back porch we've DIY'd our way through. There is not one room inside that we haven't transformed. But the exterior... that's a different story.

We're yardeners, not gardeners which is a fancy way of saying we can keep grass alive but flowers and plants risk certain death when we're tending them. That probably explains why this project - tackling the front walkway and creating much needed curb appeal - has fallen to the very bottom of the list. And now, it's the only thing left on the list!

It's time to fix this eyesore with help from The Home Depot. I know - it needs a lot of work! As a member of the #HDBlogSquad, I'll be documenting this project over the coming weeks but let's start at the beginning and see what we've got here:
- spalling bricks in the small garden area
- a sinking walkway
- a cracked bottom stair
- jagged edgers which are unsafe and unappealing
- gaping holes in the (dying?) evergreen bushes
- a rusted railing
- peeling eavestroughs
- a lopsided Japanese maple in the small garden
- original windows on the ground floor with a storm window that is painted shut and won't open
- white trimwork that could use a refresh
- and no discernible plants or flowers. Our yard is no place for the weak, ha!

We could make do with minor fixes like fixing the brick and adding new plants, but the landscaping just isn't our style so we're going to take it all out. There's a few things on the list that are a lower priority (like replacing the original window) and we have a limited budget so we'll see how much of this we actually get done.

You'd think we would have fixed the exterior much earlier. Actually, we have been thinking about this project for years but have procrastinated on taking action.

This is a plan Sean drew up about four years ago and I've had it pinned to my cork board ever since. It's an aerial view of the walkway. The look we're going for is something more formal and traditional, like the gardens I talked about in this post. A few key features:
- an angular walkway with bricks laid in a herringbone pattern
- a soldier course of bricks around the edges of the walkway
- boxwood hedges framing the outer edge
- carrying the small garden to the right of the porch and back to the brick wall
- a low brick wall to run along the front of the house
- more uniform bushes (?) along the front
- hydrangeas in the small garden

That sounds doable, right? My back already hurts just thinking about it! Luckily, Sean used to do landscaping in his university days so we have a bit of knowledge on what's involved. We've started to source out stone and plant options so follow along #ProjectWalkway on Instagram or Twitter for sneak peeks.

Now about that front garden... what would you put there?