Tips For Cleaning Up Your Exterior

July 9, 2013

My sweet parents are in town for a few days helping us clean up a few things outside. They are landscaping gurus and work horses and the amount of yard work we got done yesterday is more than we’ve done in probably two years. Our exterior checklist has changed drastically. We went from prepping for an outdoor movie party, to prepping to list our house, to now just cleaning things up for the new owners.

A main project was weeding and trimming, of course. In our front yard, the side looked like this at the beginning of the day:

And here’s a shot in the opposite direction with a pose courtesy of Greta:

Throughout the few hours (and zero dollars) it took my mom and I to get this area under control, I learned quite a few good tips from her like:

1. Trim back. After we pulled out the weeds, trimming the actual plants back so that we could see the cement curbing really helped things look neat and kept.

2. Trim up. In the top photo, you can see the unruly, red-leafed bushes. After I trimmed back all the wild branches, she showed me how trimming up the bottoms a bit would help the bush breathe. Aesthetically, it helped create different shapes, too!

3. If you have an empty spot, it can be filled with a rock. Really! When we were going to list the house, we had a small budget for plants to fill in blank spaces, but now that we’re in clean up only mode, we weren’t really looking to put more money into too many things. There are random boulders in piles tucked all around our yard (I honestly never noticed them) and my mom strategically placed them around the garden beds to fill in black spots and it looked so nice! You can see one in the bottom left of the after photo below:

After we were all done weeding, we hosed off the curbing which put the finishing clean touch on the front beds.

The last time we worked in the backyard, we removed the sod to install our garden beds–which is definitely one of our biggest regrets now that we’re moving. Why, oh why did we have to remove that sod!?

We are going to keep the raised garden beds (although currently empty) with the house, so we needed to make the space above look better. That included removing all the sod we removed (hard!), and cleaning up the dead weeds along the perimeter of the house.

My dad and I dug out all of the weeds and my mom and Greta lined up these rocks they found around the yard (I really had no idea we had this many rocks around the house!) to the newly cleaned out garden bed.

We lined the garden beds back in the cleared out space and it looked a lot better.

The last thing that needed our attention was the light on the patio that we love, but was too low. Originally, we were going to rearrange some siding–but have decided to take this fixture with us to our new house and just replace it.

We picked up this $24 exterior light at HD which is still an upgrade from the original fixture and doesn’t require any siding adjustment. We’ll take it!

Our to-do list is wrapping up and we are headed to Idaho in a few days to house hunt there. It’s pretty amazing how quickly life changes, huh.

exterior, tips

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What do you think?

Edme Smets says:
March 22, 2014 at 2:27 pm
Good post. Gives lot of insights into façade cleaning, especially of weeding and trimming of yards, which needs to be done systematically. The new family would be happy with all the efforts you guys have done to beautify the house, outdoors in particular.
Reply
Thomas says:
February 28, 2014 at 3:38 am
The pictures are nice! Everyone seems to be enjoying cleaning the exteriors. The post reminds me of gevelreiniging (facade cleaning) in Antwerpen that we did last year. It was fun to see my 2 year old son with all his gaze hooked on to the people who for him were hanging in the air and cleaning the facades. I am glad that you had a helping hand to do the exteriors and managed the job very well!
Reply
Sierra@guttercoverandprotection says:
July 16, 2013 at 4:06 am
Congrats for finding the new home owners for your house. You have shared great tips for cleaning and I liked the idea of raised garden beds idea by which helps to make your space look better and tidy as well. Thanks for making this post so useful and helpful to your readers.
Reply
Ashley@AttemptsAtDomestication says:
July 10, 2013 at 7:07 pm
I can’t believe you guys have a buyer already! That is so awesome!
Reply
Angie Romines says:
July 10, 2013 at 9:35 am
Congrats on finding a buyer. The housing market is crazy/active right now, especially in Columbus, OH, where we just bought a house. Houses are selling the day they’re listed (meaning an offer is accepted not that they can close that fast). Good news for the economy, but we had to be lightning fast to get our house. Worth it, though, with interest rates finally starting to climb again.
Reply
Jenn Leigh says:
July 10, 2013 at 8:54 am
Congrats on the sale! We just had the same discovery of using rocks to fill in empty space, I love how it looks…and of course it helps when they’re free!
Reply
Anonymous says:
July 10, 2013 at 8:12 am
we have that light from home depot! it came with our house and I love it.
april
Reply
Anonymous says:
July 9, 2013 at 3:24 pm
Congrats on selling so fast!!!
Reply
Steph says:
July 9, 2013 at 3:03 pm
Greta lined up all those rocks???!!! What a great little helper she is!
Congrats on selling your house so quickly and obviously no major hassles so far!! :) Can’t wait
for the post all about it!!
Reply
Meagan@Meagan Tells All says:
July 9, 2013 at 11:21 am
Your parents are adorbs.
Reply
Brandilyn says:
July 9, 2013 at 10:34 am
DANG! Echoing the other comments–did your house sell already?! That’s incredible, and the yard looks so tidy! Let me know if you guys want a break from house hunting, we’d love to BBQ and hang out while you’re here :)
Reply
- Julia [Chris Loves Julia] says:
  July 9, 2013 at 12:45 pm
  Brandilyn, we did! It all happened so fast and we will definitely spill more details as soon as possible. And yes. BBQ!
  Reply
mary spears says:
July 9, 2013 at 9:50 am
You’re killing me slowly with each day I must wait to see the grouted kitchen! :) Outside looks great though.
Reply
- Julia [Chris Loves Julia] says:
  July 9, 2013 at 12:44 pm
  It’s killing me too Mary. Photos as soon as we’re done.
  Reply
peg says:
July 9, 2013 at 8:18 am
Wow did you sell your house already? Congrats!! I’m also about to become an Idaho-an… coming from the (liberal, expensive) east coast it’s going to be way different, I’m excited and nervous!
Reply
- Julia [Chris Loves Julia] says:
  July 9, 2013 at 12:44 pm
  We did. I am an east coast girl, too Peg! Born and raised in Pittsburgh. Idaho is…different, but we have grown to love the slow pace.
  Reply
vicks27 says:
July 9, 2013 at 6:13 am
Really nice job. Mom and Dad are pros at the yard work!
Reply
Jessica Gehman says:
July 9, 2013 at 6:08 am
Honest question for you/Chris/whoever does your weed wacking – is it a pain with those concrete curbs or does that make it easier? Our beds aren’t edged with anything currently and we are realizing that it makes things quite complicated when it is time to edge them and deal with the grass, weeds, etc.
Thanks and looks great guys! Way to get Greta in on the fun!
Reply
- Julia [Chris Loves Julia] says:
  July 9, 2013 at 12:46 pm
  The more uniform and straight the curbing is–the easier. It’s really not bad at all and it looks so nice. :)
  Reply
Callie says:
July 9, 2013 at 5:53 am
‘cleaning up for the new owners’ – so you have accepted an offer already?! :-o :)
Reply
- Julia [Chris Loves Julia] says:
  July 9, 2013 at 12:42 pm
  Yes. It is all happening very fast. I promise to update all of you very soon.
  Reply
Kristi Lynn says:
July 9, 2013 at 5:13 am
For the raised garden beds you might want to add some landscaping rock down (less grass to cut anyway) if you are going to leave them http://wildcatfarmers.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/img_2368.jpg. I don’t think I’d leave something like that as it might be too much maintenance for a future buyer and may turn them off.
Reply
- Julia [Chris Loves Julia] says:
  July 9, 2013 at 12:42 pm
  We were planning on doing something like that, but truth be told–the future buyers don’t mind.
  Reply

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