Banana trees moved to a new corner in front of the garden beds.
Jeff has been working hard on finishing up some yard projects since we got the backyard fenced in. He removed all the remaining chain-link fence and has been transplanting some of our banana tree babies. The garden is doing great! Our tomatoes and peppers are taking the lead, with squash coming in right behind them with tons of blooms. It’s so nice to finally have a garden after all these years! We always knew it was the perfect spot in our yard but didn’t want it to be an eyesore for our neighbors or look out of place.
Cedar shingles in progress on the raised beds.
As usual, Jeff had a great idea for making the garden look a little more vintage Sunset by using some cedar shingles I had picked up off the curb (a full bundle) a couple of years ago. I knew they would come in handy someday! He cladded the outside of the boxes with layers of shingles, cutting them as needed with a carpet blade (vertically) and chop saw (for horizontal cuts) then added a nice cedar cap to the perimeter. We really love how they turned out!
The finished garden with cedar shingles and cap.
After that he built a fence to block our unsightly A/C unit, which is right by our deck. This was another fence style we took from our vintage Sunset compilation book (bought on Ebay). We are planning to stain this a medium shade of brown to match the (future) basement entryway/garden shed. The deck is a dark espresso, which we love for the deck, but we want a little bit of variance so we thought it would be nice to bring in one more shade of stain.
Fence in-progress around the A/C unit.
The A/C unit in comparison to the location of the deck…we hope this will help with noise but it definitely helps visually! (There are also plans to build a gate to hide storage under the deck.)
Here you can see the deck color. We had plans to stain it last summer and had bought the stain at Home Depot in the OOPS paint…it just so happened to be the color we had picked out anyway, so we bought 4 gallons for around $15 each.
The deck color, and an adorable toddler who loves the deck.
We’re working on finishing a few more backyard projects before Jeff’s big birthday bash coming up next weekend! We’re planning a Luau to celebrate his 40th year!
Home Sweet Split Level 