Anyone who knows me knows that I am a straight up average person when it comes to DIY or handiness in general. IKEA bookcase? Sure!…. Might be a little wobbly but it is together! This year, in efforts to learn more around our home and save $$ here and there, I have embarked on trying to do things myself – which means Jason, when he married me, committed to also, involuntarily, embarking on this journey. Sorry, hun – but in the words of Billy Joel… “We said we’d all go down together…”.

 

A fun one that we completed were by inspiration and encouragement from our friend Leon. With a few simple tools and a little elbow grease, we installed uplighting on our house and our front lawn. The up-lights against the house have a control that I can change the color, which is a lot of fun during the holidays as I can match the themes. Currently, we are rocking pink because I live in a house full of boys (pets included) and wanted a fun touch.

 

So, how did we do it? It was actually fairly simple.

We purchased a lighting transformer – all it needs is an outlet outdoors to hook into. We used the Best Pro Lighting Transformer from Amazon. For the actual lights, we got Colored Landscaping Lights – Low Voltage and then went over to our local Home Depot for low voltage wire (example here).

We ran the low voltage wire across the front of the house and buried it below the ground. We connected that main line to each of the individual lights in roughly 5-7 foot intervals in front of the house having it lead back to the outlet where we were to plug in the transformer. The transformer has the capability to turn on at dusk and off at dawn automatically – which was a huge plus.

The whole project took my husband a few hours from start to finish on a fall day to complete. Once he had the hang of it it was pretty smooth sailing and made a huge difference to the house.

Once we finished the uplighting of the house, we did uplighting on some of the trees. The only difference with this is that we use these lights instead. They don’t change colors, but our front lawn was so dark at night that having these spots woke up the property. For these it was running that main line again and connecting in the same fashion as the lights on the front of the house. This took a bit longer because the ground was harder and we had to trench longer distances. Overall, love the results. Fairly easy. And saved $$$$ just doing it ourselves.

 

Current Project: an outdoor fire place. This is going to be a HUGE one that I am currently doing solo. Here is the first step completed and I will update when the process is completed. What I have done so far is dig a 6′ by 6′ hole that is roughly 8-10” deep. I still need to use a tamper to pat it down and get some sand on, but then I am going to whip out my concrete and rebar and get to work – easy enough, right? The 5 minute, fast-forwarded video on youtube had it done in no time. I’ll update on this as it unfolds.