The garden is weird. I often wonder why we couldn't have just bought a conventional one. It's a pretty good sized plot really but it's all on different levels, there is a lot of stone and the garden is not all at the back. Oh and like the rest of the house it was also very neglected, which is a shame really because someone obviously spent a lot of time and money planning and making it lovely when it was first done.
Firstly the most garden-y part of it is not very accessible. Basically we have a big drive and terracing to the right hand side of the house and a lawn at the back, but to get to the lawn you have to go up and around the terracing in a big wiggly line so it's a bit of a mission to get there. The lawn is right behind the living room (albeit on a higher level) so the obvious solution is to put in patio doors but we'd like to make it easier to get to from outside as well.
Hmm just decided I'm not going to describe all the other problems, I'm only writing this blog for myself and I'm bored just thinking about them so no need to type them as well. I'll just make a list of things we want to do to make the outside more family-friendly and then as we do them I can add some pictures to make myself feel great.
- Knock down some of the garden wall to widen the drive access, and then use the stone to extend the wall at the other end so it goes all away along the front of the house (stops half way currently, the other side had railings before they were removed for the second world war effort).
- Close in the garden at the side of the house with railings and a fence. This will also stop people from walking RIGHT IN FRONT of the front window, which didn't used to bug me at all until I realised that even I don't do that if I go past the the house when I'm running.
- Once we can park side by side at the front of the drive we want to separate off the back half and re-purpose it as patio and BBQ area.
- Landscape the back slightly to make the space outside the living room window wider (currently just a walkway round the house) and put some steps up behind the kitchen to join the perimeter walkway together as it's currently blocked midway by a wall from when it was two houses.
- While we're on the subject of the house exterior we'd also really like to have it cleaned to make it look less dreary and also more uniform - because of the two house thing one side is cleaner than the other as obviously been cleaned at some point. Also one side of the house has had its stone lintels painted in some extremely stubborn paint that wouldn't even come off with special expensive removes-everything anti-paint acid. Apparently if we have the house steam cleaned they will even get this off too.
It's a conundrum really about the stone cleaning lark - it's just aesthetic and we have soooo many more important jobs to do but it's the first thing you see... in fact it's the only thing the nosy house-spotting passersby see (like me, I'm one of those), and the thing our neighbours have to look at every day. It would increase our kirb appeal massively so I feel it might be worth wasting some money on at some point sooner rather than later. It's something I always regret not doing at our old house.