Refreshing the Carport Pit for $50

Last fall I participated in my second $100 Room Challenge where I renovated our carport. For some reason our driveway  has a square piece of uncovered ground right next to a downspout. Before the complete landscaping renovation it was overrun with weeds and thorns. But I still didn't get a few things right the first go around so I wanted to give it a refresh. If you've been following along with my InstaStories you've seen all the behind the scenes during this project. If you missed it, you can catch them all on my highlighted "Carport" stories.

Since the downspout comes out right next to the pit, it would rain and the two inch gap between the top of the concrete and the soil would turn into a pool, then a river, and would carry the mulch right out with it. All this water drowned the bush too. Here is what it looked like after our reveal last fall...

And here's how it looked 3 weeks ago after 10 months of wear and tear...

Just real gross and completely unattractive. You can also see how using plain top soil instead of garden soil and no plant food totally killed my herb garden. All the mulch spread around by the pool of water.

After working on it a little bit here and there after work, I finally finished it this past weekend. YAY! No more cringing at the gross mulch.

I completely took everything out of the pit and filled it with soil to the top of the concrete and formed it into small dome shape so the water would run off instead of pooling up.

I knew mulch was a bad idea so I got rid of it completely. Instead, I filled it with my favorite river rocks from Home Depot. Last time I wasn't 100% in love with how I laid the brick pavers in a wavy line, so I grabbed a few more from HD and made a patter that I actually loved. These pavers are the best and I might do our entire backyard patio in them.

Even though my mushroom saga is still in limbo, the replant of the herb garden turned out great. The week after I planted them it rained almost every day (which probably didn't help with the mushroom situation now that I think about it) but it helped the herbs get rooted. 

This time I went with mint, sage, oregano, thyme, lemon balm, and cilantro. I used some of the river rocks to paint labels for each herb.

My $3 Walmart solar landscaping light crapped out and hardly put off any light at night, so I found this very similar but totally better $10 solar landscaping light at Home Depot. It's taller, has a bigger globe, and puts off way more light than the last one.

Here's a shot you don't normally see of part of our street.

I got a new Sunshine Lingstrum because the last one did really well in the almost 12 hours of sun it gets. It's cute, does well in sun and rain, and doesn't get too big.

I love having fresh herbs right outside my kitchen - I really have to limit how much I use them until they all get bigger. 

All in all, this refresh project only costed $50 for the rocks, bricks, solar light, and new herbs. Not bad for a huge transformation! Does anyone else have those tiny projects you just need to take the time to finish?