(3) Having a spacious 3 bedroom house with 2 baths (4) a large master bedroom and closet, lots of storage, (5) an open functional kitchen, (6) stacking laundry near the bedrooms or kitchen (not in the garage). As you start reading on home improvement: (1) weatherization, kitchens, bathrooms and cosmetic things like paint will have the greatest payoff! (2) Then outdoor living space like decks and patios.

My initial advice to you would be to go back to your realtor and talk to them about what would add value to your home in YOUR neighborhood, your town, your part of the country. Trends come and go, so don't look for trendy other than as accessories. Some elbow grease and sweat on basic landscaping improvements will add to the value of your home inexpensively. Question - do you ever get high winds blowing trees down in your area? Talk to the homeowners insurance company and find out your local statistics. Lots of trees around, conifers with lots of needles too. Question - do you have 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and a family room? Looks like you have a nice place out in the country or rural area that is heavily wooded. And you can always stockpile what you do not use.Hey Clint! Congratulations on being a new homeowner! Way to go! This is a mom with a son your age talking. Almost invariably you will end up using more mulch than you thought you would. It’s always good to have extra mulch on hand to replace any that’s washed away or decayed, or to cover a newly spaded area. That’s eight to nine wheelbarrows of mulch. A 100-square-foot garden will need 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cubic yards of shredded bark, leaf mold, or gravel to make a mulch layer 4 inches deep.

Try to figure out beforehand how much mulch you are going to need. Using too little mulch is like trying to paint with a dry brush. “Don’t try to stretch your mulch too far. The gravel mulch will help stabilize the soil temperature and hold water in the soil when things get really dry. You can even use pea gravel as a mulch in flower gardens – particularly perennial flower gardens with native plants in areas with hot summers. It can be a mass mulch in a Xeriscape garden or can be used around single specimen trees or other ornamental purposes. Pea gravel also makes an awesome landscaping mulch. Screes are thick layers of crushed rock (or gravel) and sand that are constructed beneath the garden to drain water from the plant roots.” The Complete Chile Pepper Book: A Gardener’s Guide to Choosing, Growing, Preserving, and Cooking, by Dave DeWitt & Paul W. Some gardeners, those with soils high in clay or who live in locations with a high water table, actually go to the trouble of creating a scree for drainage. “Since one of the most common causes of disease in peppers is fungal infection of the roots caused by poor drainage, it makes sense to have optimum drainage in the garden. In areas where drainage is a problem, pea gravel reservoirs are sometimes constructed to encourage drainage away from plants so that the roots of the plants have adequate access to oxygen (plants can drown without oxygen at their roots!). Water drains through plain pea gravel quite quickly (as opposed to fine sediment like clay, which takes forever to drain). Pea gravel is also used in gardens for drainage. As above, pea gravel on garden paths and access areas does require a structural support base layer of compacted crushed rock.

It’s generally used as a surface covering in areas where weeds are to be discouraged or where foot traffic is expected. Garden design includes pea gravel surfaces in many different styles of gardens. This raspberry garden has paths mulched with pea gravel to keep down weeds and discourage enthusiastic raspberry canes from growing outside their planter box.

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