Thayer Reno
Outdoors:
Room to entertain, and for a fruitful garden!
Decades of apartment + small home living had given me a dream of having both a generous space for outdoor entertaining, as well as to grow my own fruits.
This home let me do both of those things!
Added a fence & some lights
After reinforcing and repainting the pergola,
we also added lights.
The young passion fruit vine on the left-hand side has today been joined by a 2nd plant (one is purple passionfruit, the other yellow) and they have grown into a productive vine covering some of the pergola, providing a bit of (delicious) shade.
Wider, more welcoming steps
To make the home more inviting for evening guests (and for us), we demo-ed the original brick walkway and replaced it with a brand new series of steps leading to the house...
We also added lights to the steps, which is a nice touch
New Roof
&
Windows
&
All doors
(interior and exterior)
Oh yeah we replaced all of those things too.
Widened the parking pad to accomodate an extra car, plus new concrete slabs
The original parking situation required tandem parking for 2 cars:
In the front, we expanded the parking to accommodate 2 cars side by side.
We also replaced the outdated "stamped concrete" of the driveway with new custom-poured concrete slabs and volcanic rock.
placeholder to show the
wider parking space
Oh yeah we replaced all of those things too.
Re-creating + adding needed drainage to the side yard
So, fun fact: when it rained a lot, the water on the side of the house would just...
... sit there.
Not great. We were nervous that if it were to rain a lot, it wouldn't be great to have all of that water sitting there.
So to avoid any potential future issues, we ripped up the old concrete,
installed drainage pipes,
and then laid new concrete around the pipes.
(special guest appearance: the new A/C system, new hot water heater, and the trees right before I planted them!)
Some pictures of the fruit garden
After a few years of TLC, the garden started bearing fruit -- literally!
Pineapple guava:
These little fruits taste like a mix of pineapple, guava, and mint, with a hint of bubblegum?
The skin is technicaly edible, but I recommend scooping out the insides instead.
They are ripe when they fall on the ground, so harvesting's a snap!
Loquat:
For the first year, I thought this little guy wasn't gonna make it... and then in year 3: BAM!
It shot up, but most importantly, produced several clusters of delicious loquats.
A loquat to me is most like a small, tart version of an apricot, with a hint of muscat flavor. Messy to eat, but yummy.
Passionfruit:
Probably my favorite tropical fruit, hard to find in supermarkets and pretty expensive when I can find them (like $4 each!).
I love this fruit so much that I planted two of them -- one in the front, one in the back.
This one here isn't ripe yet -- when they ripen they turn more of a purple color, with a tart, tropical orange inside.
"Ice Cream Bean" tree
Yet another exotic favorite that can be hard to buy in stores. I've seen them for sale online for $10 - $20 each (!!!)
When the pods ripen, they open up to have large seeds surrounded by a fluffy white fruit that yeah, sort of tastes like ice cream!
It takes some practice to nibble around the seeds, but it's worth it.
Fun fact: this tree actually ADDs nitrogen back to the soil, improving it!
"Oroblanco" grapefruit:
Spanish for "White Gold", these grapefruits are uncommonly sweet, and lack a lot of the unpleasant acid flavor that other types of grapefruit sometimes have.
They tend to ripen by around November / December.
Pomegranate
This little tree still has some growing to do, but it gave us its first few harvest of modest pomegranates this year.
Three different types of tangerines
The one to the right of the house is a "Kishu" mandarin... they are small but honestly the sweetest I've ever tasted (and seedless too!). I need to look back in my files to find the other 2 types -- those are more standard ones.. the tree (and fruits) grow larger than the Kishu... I put those around the permiter so that they do dual-duty as privacy hedge as well.
"Little Cado" Avocado
Like the pomegranate, avocado trees can take several years until they grow fruit, but behold!
This is a good sign for the upcoming years!
UPDATE!!!! As of April 29, 2026, there are a TON of baby avocados currently growing!!! You know when you walk down the street and see an avocado tree dripping with fruit? Well, my darling Little Cado looks like it's on its way to becoming a prolific producer! I'm such a proud momma!!!
Also! There is a lime tree in the front yard that I forgot to take pictures of -- it's got babies now too, so you can make your own guacamole if things keep up!!!
