Royalview Landscape Makeover, Dramatic Before and After Photo Reveal: Backyard Areas

I asked Willie, after all of the landscaping was complete, which area he believed had the most dramatic transformation. His reply was the front lawn. I do agree that the transformation is definitely dramatically different, but… my thoughts are that the backyard areas were definitely transformed the most.

Here are the before and after photos. You can decide which you choose as well. You can see our front lawn transformation before and after photos here.

Upon our very first visit to Royalview, we were encountered with a make-shift outdoor kitchen, and a very large stump from a downed tree, right in the middle of the yard.

We did not let this thwart our enthusiasm for this home. There was much potential to be unlocked here.

So, from a right side angle before picture, you can see the kitchen and the stump right behind it, in the yard.

Before photo of Royalview's backyard.  acrossthelake.blog
Before photo of Royalview's back yard.  acrossthelake.blog

In the after photo, the kitchen is gone, the stump is gone, and a beautiful tiered garden can now be seen from behind the pillar of the covered back patio upon approach.

After photo of Royalview's back yard garden.  acrossthelake.blog

This stump was the before lawn decor. And even though it was quite the sight, I could envision a beautiful tiered garden here that flowed naturally with the land’s own organic lines.

Before photo of Royalview's back yard.  acrossthelake.blog

And here it is now. I still cannot believe that it actually exists, outside my imagination. The Eagle A. Improvements team brought it to life just as I had envisioned.

Royalview's backyard 3 tiered garden.  acrossthelake.blog
Royalview's tiered backyard garden.  acrossthelake.blog

I was able to choose the plants that were to go into this garden, as well as the front gardens, and I also gave Eagle A. artistic freedom to add others that they thought would work well.

Everything is so pretty. I couldn’t be happier with the results. And bonus! We now have Texas Bluebonnets blooming in the back garden. That was one of Eagle A.’s surprises for us.

Bluebonnets are blooming in Royalview's backyard garden.  acrossthelake.blog

For the far right side of our backyard area, there wasn’t really anything but grass, and water would stand in that back corner area of the house. We had a generator and a propane tank installed, and then Eagle A. custom poured steps for the maintenance of this equipment so that mud would no longer be tracked back and forth on our patio and sidewalks.

Before:

Before photo of Royalview's backyard.  acrossthelake.blog

After:

After photo of Royalview's backyard.  acrossthelake.blog

We, and others, can now easily access this area and no more tracking in dirt and mud. That’s a big Yay! And a huge win! And so cute, Willie wrote our names in the cement.

Next, is the other side of the patio, going toward our back gate. This before photo is how it appeared when we first saw the house.

Before photo of Royalview's back yard.  acrossthelake.blog

After the Eagle A. team finished their beautification, it is now clean, simplistic beauty. The grassy areas are all newly laid sod. Eagle A. also installed irrigation for the backyard grass and garden.

Royalview's After Photo:  Backyard  acrossthelake.blog

In the gravel area, there are built in drains, and this line follows the drain line.

Here is a before picture of the drain line area:

Before photo French Drains
acrossthelake.blog

Eagle A. made sure that all drains were clean and flowing. And the whole area is so much neater.

Look closely at the after picture and you can see one of the little hidden sprinkler heads. These rise up when the water comes on.

After photo:  Drain line in back yard.  acrossthelake.blog

On the other side of the gate, across from the grassy area, is a small little nook between our garage and house. This area houses the outdoor a/c condenser.

Before, there were stacks of landscaping bricks piled up against the outside of the garage.

Before photo.  AC area in backyard.  acrossthelake.blog

Now, everything is cleaned/cleared out, and white gravel has been installed.

After photo:  AC area in back yard.  acrossthelake.blog

So much better! And thankfully Eagle A. was able to use those landscaping bricks in our backyard tiered garden. So fabulous!

I think you can probably see why I thought the backyard makeover was so dramatic. There was a lot to clean up, make useful, and beautify.

It’s so much more peaceful out here now. We’re looking forward to getting our patio all decked out so we can sit back here and enjoy.

3 tiered backyard garden on a hillside.  acrossthelake.blog

We’ve put out a few solar lights already, so it’s really pretty after dark.

3 tiered backyard garden on hillside lit up at night.  acrossthelake.blog

Willie and I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing the progress of our property being renovated and given new life. It’s been quite a fun journey for us.

Till next time, stay safe, and follow your joy! God is truly good!

Johanna and Willie

acrossthelake.blog

Landscape Design, Home and Garden Renovation, Before and After Photos, Houston, Conroe, Texas, Best Landscape Company Eagle A. Improvements, in Collaboration with HOU-TEX Outdoor Services

Royalview Landscape Makeover, Dramatic Before and After Photo Reveal: Front Lawn

The transformation is complete!

Willie and I are very happy, very pleased, ecstatic, all the above, with the results of our completed landscape makeover. So, if you’re all ready… Drum roll please… Sit back and enjoy these very dramatic before and after photos detailing our front lawn makeover.

I’ll begin with our front door entryway. This has to be my favorite. Although, every area is my favorite, there’s just nothing like the view from our front door.

Before photo:  View from our front door.  acrossthelake.blog
Before: View from our Front Door

This view already had me in awe. Being able to open my front door and see the lake across the street was very exciting and unbelievable to me on our first visit to our new home.

This is now the view from our front door:

After photo:  View from our front door.  acrossthelake.blog
After: View from our Front Door

And, it’s very functional as well as beautiful. I was not able to walk up to, or down from, our front porch. This was also the case with visitors and mail/delivery people. Our mailman made the comment to us that we just made his life a lot easier. No more traipsing through the ditch and climbing a hill to get to us. Awesome!

Next is the Southern front corner of our front yard. We are on a corner lot, so this area is seen the most by passerby’s and this area also has a great view of the lake. We can see the lake from our front porch, as well as from our yard in areas between our neighbor’s houses, and this is one of the areas, so we decided this would make a great place for a garden and seating area with a swing.

These photos also show the transformation of our front facade.

Before:

Before Photo:  Front Porch to South Lawn View and Front Facade.  acrossthelake.blog
Before: Front Porch to South Lawn View and Front Facade

After:

After photo front porch to South lawn and front facade.
acrossthelake.blog
After Photo Front Porch to South Lawn and Front Facade

A closer look at the front South Lawn garden from the road:

After photo:  South Lawn Garden Area.  acrossthelake.blog
After: South Lawn Garden Area

A closer look at the bridge:

After photo:  South Lawn Bridge.  acrossthelake.blog
After: Front South Lawn Garden Bridge

Where there once was nothing but brush, we can now stroll across the bridge and enjoy a beautiful garden as well as a lovely view of the lake. A nice place to enjoy an ice cream bar or ice tea, and a friendly chat.

Next, let’s stroll on over to the Northern corner of our front lawn, and visit our second garden with seating area:

Before:

Before Photo:  View from our porch to our front North Lawn area.
acrossthelake.blog
Before: View from Front Porch to our North Lawn Area

After:

After photo of our North front lawn from our front porch.
acrossthelake.blog
After: View of our North Front Lawn area from our Front Porch

That is really quite the difference, isn’t it? We can now simply walk down our front steps and across a path to sit and enjoy another garden and beautiful lake view.

I’d also like to share a before photo of Keren of Eagle A. Improvements, in collaboration with Albert of HOU_TEX Outdoor Services, from when they first came out and took a look around to gather ideas, and then an after photo of their very beautiful work after completion.

Before Photo:  Albert and Keren visiting our property for the first time.  acrossthelake.blog
Before Photo: Albert and Keren Visiting our Property For the First Time

After:

After photo of our front yard from our driveway.
acrossthelake.blog
After Photo View of Landscape Transformation

Here are more after photos of Royalview from a road view:

Royalview after landscaping makeover.  
acrossthelake.blog
Royalview after Landscape Makeover
Royalview after landscape makeover.  acrossthelake.blog
Royalview after Landscape Makeover
Royalview after landscape makeover.  acrossthelake.blog
Royalview After Landscape Makeover

Willie and I are both looking forward to seeing everything in full bloom soon. Spring, and pollen, are in the air for sure. It’s so nice having butterflies and bumblebees stopping by to visit all the lovely flowers.

Next post will be the before and after photo reveal of our back yard, so stay tuned.

Till next time, stay safe, and follow your joy!

Johanna and Willie

acrossthelake.blog

Before and After Landscape Photo Reveal, Landscape Design, Houston, Conroe, TX, Landscape Makeover, Renovation, Garden Bridge, Beautiful Gardens, Lifestyle Blog, Home and Garden

The New Plants are Here! Plus Landscape Updates!

All the new plants have arrived! They are so beautiful!

For those just tuning in, all landscape design and installation is being performed by Eagle A. Improvements (apologies to Eagle for omitting the “A” in previous posts, but all links are correct).

Albert and Keren have really outdone themselves picking out gorgeous, full, and healthy plants. It was like Christmas when they arrived bearing these gifts!

Our color scheme of greens, with blues, purples, and white, is really coming to life with all of their plant choices, and for an extra bit of icing on the cake, Keren surprised us with Texas Bluebonnets!

We are so excited for these!

Albert chose some beautiful ivy to incorporate in our back tiered planting area, so that it can start flowing down the sides. Great idea!

Albert and Keren got right to work placing all the plants in the areas they had planned for them.

They’ve already planted the hedges along the front of Royalview.

While the plants are being organized, there is much more work going on at the same time in different areas. The workers are building molds to pour steps for our walkways.

When I realized what they were doing, I was so surprised. I thought they were going to just purchase some pavers to put in amongst white gravel to make our walkways, but no, and when I mentioned my surprise to Albert, he said they do not do anything just the regular way. They go the extra mile to make things really nice.

He is not kidding. Willie and I are super impressed with this team’s attention to detail on every level. If you’ve been following our landscaping series of adventures, you’ll know that Albert and Keren have gone plant shopping with us personally so we could pick out and discuss the types of plants that would be great for the color scheme, look, and feel of our property, plus the plants that would thrive in our environment. They always add a personal touch to everything they do.

Here are a couple of update pictures of our back yard.

Look how nice our tiered garden area is coming along! They have been placing these stones one by one and leveling everything as they go. All the backyard grass is going to be resodded as well.

They are working on better drainage for us since we live on a hilltop with our back yard hill area coming down toward our home. They are also installing irrigation systems for every planting area. That is going to be so nice.

Back steps are being poured as well. We have a generator and propane tank in our back yard. This will make it much easier for workers to check on these systems, and also easier for us to not have mud and dirt tracked across our back patio on every visit. Win, win!

We also have a small area that lies between our house and garage. This was piled with bricks that the former homeowner left behind. Eagle was able to utilize some of these bricks for our back tiered planting area, and the rest they are going to haul off for us. Albert advised that gravel would work best in this area. Due to the way it slopes down, it will make it easier to drain off when it rains. It is an unused area, so no need for grass maintenance here either.

They’re getting it prepped for white gravel.

It’s going to look so neat and clean, and no worries on upkeep.

Okay gang, onward and upward!

All the folks at Eagle “A” (thank you very much!) Improvements have gone out of their way to make this a wonderful experience for me and Willie, and to make sure that we are seeing our dreams brought into reality.

We could not be happier. Everything is exceeding our expectations on every level.

Till next time, stay safe, and follow your joy. God is truly good!

Johanna and Willie

acrossthelake.blog

Landscaping Design, Landscape Progress Report, Houston, Conroe, Home Improvement Company, Best Texas Landscape and General Contractor, Eagle A. Improvements, Non-SponsoredTestimonial, Outdoor Custom Steps

Royalview Shining Bright Again

Hello everyone!

Purchasing a white house… So, of course we both fell in love with the beauty of the exterior in the listing photos. That was what drew us in for a closer look. Upon our very first visit we were greeted with the actual reality up close. Not going to lie, my first reaction was “Ewwww…. what??”

But she was so beautiful, we both said, “We can get it cleaned!”, and that’s exactly what has been at the top of our move-in to-do list.

I know we’re getting ahead in the sequence of move-in happenings, but this transformation is so dramatic, just with a good pressure wash cleaning and bleach, that this post gets moved up in the line-up.

Here’s the front porch facade before – You’ll see what I mean:

Ewww…. what? ? Yep! She was a bit dirty…

Willie contacted a company called Window Genie (not sponsored), and they came right out. Ty was the lead on this job and he was absolutely fantastic. This turned out to be a 2 day job, and he returned on Saturday to complete everything. Here are some before and after photos:

Thanks to these guys, Royalview is shining bright and beautiful again. We couldn’t be happier.

As we’re getting this blog launched and tuning the details, one thing we’ve decided upon is giving shout-outs to people/vendors who help us along our journey. We will give names of people and companies who have really gone out of their way to be helpful, professional, and friendly. The Category, for future reference is Vendors. And also of reference is our general area. We are in the Conroe/Montgomery, TX area. If you are in this area or are planning to move here, we hope that our experiences can be of some help to you.

So, big thank you to the folks at Window Genie, here is their info:

Till next time, be safe and follow your joy!

Johanna and Willie

acrossthelake.blog

Pressure Washing Company, Conroe, Montgomery, Texas, Home Restoration Project, Lakeview Home

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