3 Outdoor Jobs I Prefer to Hire Out

This post is sponsored by Neighborly, Your Hub for Home Services

As we’ve grown older and busier with kids and life, I’ve gotten smarter about what projects we want to tackle at home ourselves and which ones we like to hire out. And there are some tasks I’ve never even thought to tackle myself and don’t plan on trying anytime soon. (Know your limits, friends!) I recently discovered Neighborly, and they’re my new one-stop shop for home services. Tons of local professionals, all experts at their trade, are housed under the Neighborly home service provider umbrella. Need a plumber? Mr. Rooter Plumbing is in the Neighborly family of home service brands. An electrician? Mr. Electric! House cleaners? Molly Maid is a Neighborly brand! You’ve probably seen these and many other service brands around your neighborhood, but you may not have known that they’re all Neighborly. We had some lingering to-dos in the yard, and I wasn’t even sure who to call. I clicked onto Neighborly.com and booked three jobs in about three minutes. And I’m never turning back. Here’s where we started…

Gutters be gone

When we were painting our house, the painters had to take off all of the gutters to paint the trim. Unfortunately, more than 80 percent of our gutters were actually cracked, damaged or overflowing, and they put those in a big pile in the back. (And that's when we decided we had to get new gutters.) We ordered new copper gutters (exciting!) but the pile of broken gutters just sat in our backyard. I wanted to get them out, but we don't even have a truck anymore.

So I called Junk King — another Neighborly service provider, and they came out within two days to remove all of the gutters, plus they took a pass through the garage and got rid of the... well, junk. They removed it all for us. It's such an easy option in case you have renovation waste, debris, or clutter that you want removed... but don't even know where to take it. Even better — They're an eco-friendly company, committed to recycling, repurposing, and reusing materials. Chris and I were scratching our heads, thinking we were going to have to rent a truck to haul all of that to a scrap metal yard. I can't even imagine how long that would have taken us. This option was SO much better.

They charge by the weight, so it's tailored to each project. This is a number I'll be keeping in my back pocket, and I wish I had it even earlier. I feel like we have spent a lot of time and money trying to figure out, "What do we do with all of this renovation debris?" Well, now we have connections with Junk King (and they're "royal" at that)!

Face the music, mosquitos

Painting the exterior trim really got us excited about hanging outside more. We have some fun things we want to do with the exterior, like paint the front door, add a door to the mudroom and more. And there are some not-so-fun things we have to address. Like mosquitos. We get a lot of questions about them from those who know how humid it gets here in North Carolina. We've been looking for a solution that's more natural (Chris wants to be sure we can keep our lightning bugs), but citronella candles don't have a great range.

Then I learned that Mosquito Joe has a natural option that uses essential oils, such as lemongrass, peppermint or rosemary, and garlic to repel mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas from the property. The next words out of my mouth were, “Sign us up!”  Mosquito Joe is another Neighborly company, specializing in outdoor pest control. We signed up for a 3-month treatment plan where they will come out and spray every month. Their team was out in less than a week and the treatment only took around 30 minutes. And the results? So far, it’s been great — we’ve spent many nights outside entertaining and haven’t had any issues. I think Chris was almost disappointed you can’t actually smell the garlic in the air…but for around $80 per treatment we’ll get so much more use out of our backyard!

Backyard Sources

Landscaping facelift

It's been two years since we did our landscaping, and I know that the first year it sleeps, the second it creeps, and the third year it leaps. Well in the second year, we've had some plants that have creeped ...toward the dark side. Like, they're not coming back. On the other hand, we have plants that are exploding in growth (hydrangeas are coming in hot)! So now we know more about what's working for our sunlight patterns and what's not working. 

I hired The Grounds Guys to come in and supplement where we need more plants. They are another Neighborly company whose team can cover everything from concept to planting, to landscape installation. So for instance, behind our pool we had planted all these boxwoods. They're just not thriving there, so I want to move them elsewhere in our yard and put more hydrangeas there — those plants love our yard so much. So The Grounds Guys came in to move a bunch of plants, and plant some new things — including star jasmine trained in a diamond pattern. I'm no landscaper, so that's one of the places that I love calling in the experts. They have a whole crew that can tackle these projects in no time! Stay tuned for "after" photos.