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- [Man] Make it yours.
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- [Dale] Good day.
I'm Dale Vine.
I'm a landscaper.
You might've seen me on the telly a couple of times renovating.
Recently released a book called Dale Vine's Outdoor Reno Guide, and I've come
to really give this front yard a bit of street appeal, and do some cool stuff
with a really achievable budget.
This is my passion.
I like the outdoors.
I like doing up areas.
This is an area that's just being spruced up for sale.
By the look of it, they've just thrown down a bit of mulch to cover a few no-nos.
Couple of residents in here that are quite happy to chew on the letters in there.
Remove these and open it all up a little bit more.
So there's a lot to work with.
I always find it helpful to get online and try and find a bit of info and inspiration
really for outdoor renovations.
Oh, geez.
Embarrassing.
My book's come up again.
A really easy way to spruce up the front of your place is to hop a nice new
letterbox out there.
So I've just clicked and collected one of those, and I'll go and pick it up.
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So the exterior is really dated now.
The yuccas will go.
We're also going to paint it with a nice coastal gray, which will look great.
A modular deck at the front door, put a nice front door on there that really
has a pop of color.
The old concrete driveway, we'll freshen it up with a nice lick
of paint, put some new plants in, bring in some new instant turf and really
green it up.
So I'm pretty pumped to get started on this front yard.
It would be a bit easier with a bit of help.
Oh, geez.
That was easy.
Well, let's get stuck into it boys.
- [Man] Let's do it.
- Yeah, we got shovels.
That's going to be needed.
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Yeah.
So I'm just taking down this whole tree completely.
With an entrance that's going to look as beautiful as the one we're going
to put in, I think, why hide it?
So this old letter box here, it actually looks like the post has broken
off at some stage and they've just shoved it back into the ground.
It's really low.
There you go.
I was right.
Oh, here's the posty.
- [Man] Hey [inaudible 00:02:32] buddy.
- Thank you.
- There you go.
- Good man.
Thank you.
- No problem.
- Oh, hang on.
This one's a bill.
Don't want that.
Thank you.
- Okay.
- Good on that.
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Oh, no.
I see everybody's favorite toy shop.
You'll see.
Sausage sizzle day, too.
So people come to Bunnings for a lot of reasons obviously, tools, hardware.
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Mermaid Tail, perfect.
Click and collect.
This is the biggest bit of tech that I'm going to put out in the front yard.
It's the Ring video doorbell, and then anytime somebody comes to your
front door, you can see them on video and via your phone.
So, yeah, you can see the neighbor's pesky dog doing a poo on your lawn and go and
arrest him at the end of the day.
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So cheaper option when planting is always to buy smaller stock.
If you're going to live there for a long time anyway, the root stock becomes a lot
stronger than planting a big mature plant in straight away.
So, in the long run, it'll be beneficial for the plant and
better for your pocket.
My favorite plants are probably natives.
They were here before we were, and they liked the conditions,
so why not stick with them?
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This tree here is obviously just a little overgrown.
What we're basically trying to do is just reshape it a bit.
The more you chop the top off, the more it'll fatten out in the middle.
So try and block neighbors off a little bit more, and it should bluff right
up again and fill out like a nice screening tree, which it was probably
planted for in the first place.
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Best way to screen your neighbors is using plants, but sometimes if you haven't got
plants that instantly do that, these fence toppers are a great option.
You can paint them up along with your fence and they'll look a million bucks.
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If you're going to paint, I think the only way to go is with one
of these babies.
Use a sprayer and make it half the time that you would with a paint roller.
Anything that's dark is going to make all that green leaf look really vibrant and
anything planted in front of it really pop out.
So it should look great.
Ryan and I are going gung-ho on these holes here.
You're doing a pretty good job, Ryan.
I'm doing a great job.
They're going to hold posts that will attach these screens to for some star
Jasmine to go up.
So that'll cover this wall.
We'll paint this wall as well, probably the same color as the fence so
all this stuff pops out and it looks really nice.
Yeah.
So there's this wall over here to do as well, boys, if you'd finish that this way.
- [Man] You're funny.
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- All right, boys.
So we'll get a post in each hole, and we're going to space them out using
these pre-cut 900 boards, and then just we'll plumb them up one-by-one
as we go along.
It's always easier to have a little pre-cut packer or something that you can
just quickly nail to it and keep the spacings even.
So we've done enough for these four posts and we'll just shoot them
up with a nail gun.
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Nice.
Cool beans.
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So this is an old bench seat I've got from my local tip for 20 bucks, too,
so I thought that was a bit of a steal.
The timber's actually not too bad.
It's just the paint job on, it's a bit dated and starting to flake.
So I'll just give it a quick buzz with the abrasive disc on the grinder and get most
of this off.
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Originally I was going to paint the whole thing including the timber white,
but now that it's come up so well, I'm just going to oil the timber up and
just do the ends in white.
So, yeah, it's a bit of a hidden gem under there.
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We're just going to chuck in some edging now to separate the lawn from the
garden bed areas.
We're using this Merbau edging and these steel pegs.
So it's really simple.
You can get a nice curve on it really easily, and then you just literally bang
it into the ground.
So simple job for anyone.
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The old Mermaid Tail.
Painting your front door is a cheap and easy way of just changing the appeal
of your house and the total look of it really, so if you don't like it in a
few months, you can always paint it back.
So that's why we've gone with a pretty out-there color with Mermaid Tail.
Modular decking like these kits here are a really great way
if you've only got a small space to use.
It's all pre-drilled holes, so you just basically screw them in where
the holes are and then just level it up in the space that you want to put it in.
And those little legs, they're adjustable, so they just go into the holes,
and just adjust it to a level base.
And then once you've got that all sitting there, these are already screwed together,
and you just pop the panels on top and screw them off.
So it's simple as, and definitely anybody can do it.
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Once you get your plants home, instead of just going gung-ho and chucking
them in as soon as you get here, just space them out in their pots first
to make sure everything fits and looks all right, and then you can go from there.
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So turf's here, which is exciting.
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Always love with the instant turf.
You just roll it out and it changes the whole front yard or backyard instantly,
hence the name.
This is Sir Walter buffalo.
Does really well in shade, which is probably pretty good with this
big tree in the front yard.
So I reckon it'll look perfect in this little spot and should grow well for many
years to come.
So I'm just going to install this ring doorbell, which is pretty exciting.
I've already uploaded the app on me phone, so if we just put it on the wall,
we can actually test where a good spot is.
So, activating.
Someone's at the front door.
Hello.
He's not bad-looking bloke.
You can talk to that person.
I won't do it because talking to yourself is just weird.
That's probably a pretty good height for most people, so I'll screw that in.
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This is a heavy duty gloss driveway paint in deep charcoal.
It's Jet Dry.
So we're about to roll this on and really change the whole thing.
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You can use this on concrete driveways, garage floors, paths, or pavers,
or anything that's concrete basically.
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Painting the driveway really has freshened that up and matched it
into the whole façade.
Here's the love bench.
Look at that.
Wow.
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This is what we've made it for, boys.
Yeah.
That's [inaudible].
- [Man] Yeah.
- Hit out of the park, just like this front yard, boys.
Well done.
- Well done, guys.
- Good on you.
Thanks for all the help.
- Beautiful.
- When you look at the transformation at the end, I think, you know,
all the hard work is definitely worth it.
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Totally new color scheme really freshens up the whole house.
The new letterbox really is a big change from the one that was there previously.
There are little star Jasmine screens that we've put up.
That wall was really boring and what we've done with it, I think,
really turns it into a feature.
Taking out the bottom parts of the trees just to expose a bit of the trunk again
really shapes the front yard a little bit bigger.
Plants are going to really mature over time.
At the moment they look great, but in another six months' time,
they'll look even better.
But if I had to pick a favorite part, I'd probably say the upcycled seat
is my favorite.
This seat will sit here in this garden looking over all our beautiful work
for many years to come.
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