There are a number of little jobs you can do to clean up the exterior of your Brisbane home at this time of year that will provide immediate improvement to the overall presentation of your property.  These tasks are great for selling your home or getting your rental ready for an inspection but also good for when you want to present the best version of your home for a dinner party or family barbeque.  We all get so busy that these jobs can easily get away on us over the winter months.

Pressure Cleaning

You will be amazed at what a difference a few hours with a pressure cleaner will make.  Take a look at your driveway, brick pavers, concrete paths and the cold side of the house and any exterior surfaces prone to catching dirt and mould.   Aggregate concrete driveways tend to darken over the winter months so a good blast with a pressure cleaner in Spring is ideal.  Most hard surfaces will be OK but do test carefully on other surfaces such as painted areas as the high pressure can lift paint.  You can use the Gerni on rock walls and concrete garden edging too.

Cost and time: At the time of writing a Gerni can be purchased from around $140+ and you will need to set aside 2 hours of your time to give the driveway and pavers a quick once over.  Alternatively give a local professional a call.

Garden Edging and Mulching

Most gardens already have some sort of edge whether it is an actual edging product or just a cut edge in the grass.  These often get covered with soil or garden debris.  Neat edges make a difference.  It’s one of those little details that adds up to a well maintained property.  Move garden soil away from edges and clear out any leaves and debris that hide the lines of the garden design.   Get the whipper snipper out and make sure your lawn edging is spectacular.

Once you’ve cleaned the garden up a bit and removed the weeds a load of mulch spread around finishes the job and ensures you won’t have to be outside weeding every other weekend.  Mulch is so good at keeping weeds down and limiting the requirement for weed spray which we all know is just not good for our environment.  Mulch also keeps moisture in.  Make sure you don’t put mulch right up to the base of trees though – mulch should not come into contact with the tree trunk as it can cause decay, encourage disease and stop oxygen getting into the soil.

Cost and time: An actual garden edger will cost anywhere from $150+ and again 2 hours will see most jobs complete.  Mulch at the time of writing is around $90 m/3 plus delivery.  Or… hire a professional to take care of the lot.

HedgeTrimming & Feeding

Hedges are a blessing and a curse.  They provide fantastic screening and add structured and formal greenery to the front of your property but of course they do need a good prune a couple of times a year and this can be time consuming.

In Brisbane,  July and August are an ideal time to give your hedge a good hard prune.  If you are timing this for the sale of your property then do it a couple of months before you start to advertise as they do tend to look a little bare and awful after that annual hard prune.  If you don’t have that amount of time to let the leaves grow back to a nice finish then I would suggest just a light prune for shaping before listing your property.

When you’re finished, a good watering and a sprinkle of Osmocote or similar granular fertiliser around the base to the drip line will ensure you get a healthy and bushy regrowth when Spring comes.  If you have a young hedge that is still growing to height then this routine will ensure nice strong growth each year.

Cost and time: You can pick up a hedge trimmer from around $90 and allow around an hour to do a nice trim on an average front hedge including disposing of the clippings and raking.

If you decide to DIY, when you’re finished sit back and enjoy a nice cold drink – you’ve earned it!