Nesting With Grace

by Brooke Christen

Outdoor Changes- Trees Removed, New Pool Slide and Plans for Stand Alone Gym

May 18, 2023

Thought I would do an updated blog post on changes in our yard from a new outdoor slide for our pool, hanging chairs, removal of trees, which snowballed to other projects! We had plans drawn up for a stand alone gym, and we built an outdoor kitchen (sharing that next week). Things are blooming in our yard and wanted to share!

Beetles attacked 7 of our Spruce trees and sadly all 7 of them died!! It really was so sad when we heard there wasn’t anything we could do. I didn’t realize that we needed to get our trees sprayed to prevent beetles from taking over. Hopefully this will help you if you have spruce trees, get them sprayed for beetles!

It was pretty entertaining to watch the professional tree trimmers, remove our massive spruce trees. You can see a guy in the tree, he was lifted up by a crane to the top of the trees, then he climbed down the tree and with a chainsaw cut it in the middle. Just the tree removal and one stump ground down was $5500. I know there is a big difference in price from state to state, we thought it was reasonable (we got two bids and they were the same).

We are planning on putting a large tree right by that rock to replace the one that was just removed. Our landscaper, and friend has a 20′ tree he is going to bring over soon! I will do a blog post on all our outdoor plants then!

Thankfully everything is really green right now, and in bloom so our yard is looking pretty despite missing 7 mature trees. We have plans to replace several of the trees. PS- get all exterior details HERE.

Also just want to point out the placement of our plants in our yard. We did hire a landscaper who did the curbing, pavers, pergola etc (see that blog post here) I really like how they clustered similar plants together to make a large impact. You can see in the front we have 6 of the blue, Forget Me Not flowers planted together following the curbing and it just looks so great.

Let’s go through the gate and around to the backyard!

There were three trees removed behind our shed too. Thankfully you don’t really notice with the neighbors trees. And now you can see the mountain better! I will share our plans below for that space. PS- we just got these pool loungers to go in the shallow end of pool.

Pool Floats-

Shop all floats HERE

We have bought many inflatable slides and they have a short life span. Lola told me about her friends slide and how much fun they had playing on it. We were able to find a similar version, very happy with our new slide! You can hook a hose up to it, or have a plumber hook water up to it. So far it has been great to just go down with a wet swimsuit, lots of fun!

Slide Link // Pool Blog Post

You can see the trees in the background (they are in our circle) have died as well, the beetles got to them too, they are getting removed soon too. The area behind our shed had three trees removed! You can see the mountains so much more!! See what it looked like before in the next photo…

Can you believe the change with the trees down? Since we had to have those removed we now have A LOT of space behind our little shed. This is the area we are going to build a stand-alone gym! Move our home gym out of our garage to this spot.

The area behind our shed is about 25’x30′ rather large. We have sent in our plans to our HOA and to the city for approval. We hope to start building our gym in June! PS- our landscapers put in our trampoline, we did a DIY version in Connecticut HERE. Also find our trampoline gray pad HERE.

This is the plan for our new home gym!!!! It will match our exterior colors. The front of the gym is 14′ and drops down to 9′ in the back. We are going to do a climbing rope in the front part, which I can’t wait for!!!! The style of the gym inside will be really similar to what we have now in our garage gym here.

Our Architect is Wheeler Design

More Backyard-

A full year of loving and using our backyard space and we really wouldn’t change anything!!!

I just painted our vintage mail slot sorter (I shared it originally on this post). LOVE it black with all the terracotta pots. We bring our TV out here in the summer for movie nights!
Black and White Stool // Swivel Chairs

We hung four of these hanging chairs off our pergola and love what they add! Extra seating and looks so cute!

Get all the details on our pergola and pavers HERE

Fun Backyard Sources-

Shop Backyard Favorites HERE

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