Grass is growing!

This is apparent in the picture with the shed, but I wanted to point it out again: we have grass!!! It was a LOT of effort that Sunday a few weeks back, but it's so exciting to have a green yard. well, green, with a new layer of yellow. We'll have to start raking - carefully - soon.

New Shed

Our shed was delivered today - hooray! It's very pretty, if a shed can be pretty. It seems like a well-built shed, too. We got it from the place by the Amish Market in Burtonsville - Beiler Structures.


Just one guy in a Ford F-150 came to deliver it.


It was set up on PVC pipes to roll it around, but it was still a lot of effort to get it into place.

We'll have to fix where the truck drove over over the new grass, but the yard looks good so far.

Work on the backyard

Sunday was exhausting! Seth and I spent the day moving soil and planting grass, but hopefully in a few weeks we'll have a green lawn.

As a reminder, here is what the yard used to look like:
The boxed frame on the right is for a future shed.
(see also this old post for a picture of what the yard looked like after our driveway contractors finished with it).

We wanted a green lawn, and to do that we needed to do a LOT of work. Since the driveway people dumped sand and clay over the yard, we needed to till that, then spread good soil, then spread seed.

On top of doing this to the lawn, we're preparing a base for a shed. This should have been done in August, but we procrastinated and have paid for it. Seth (with help from George and I) used 8 6x6s notched together to create the box frame, which he then nailed together and used 4ft rebar to keep in place. Since the yard slopes down, the front of the box was dug down a bit, and the rear was raised up. Then we had 10 scoops of gravel delivered from Ernest Maier ($150 delivery, plus ~$200 in gravel) and dumped into the frame. I was home for this delivery, and got a lot of the gravel leveled out (with some help from Daniel, too).


Since the shed wouldn't be coming for at least a week, though, I let the gravel sit like this to work on other things. I made an appointment for the soil to be delivered on Friday.

Story about the soil: Our city runs a program where they collect lawn clippings, leaves, etc and mulch it, then sell it back to the residents. It's really good soil, and cheap. We ordered 4 cubic yards, prescreened, and delivered, for a total of $86.60. We could have used a bit more, but 4 yards was mostly enough.

I left a message with the city to have the driver get our neighbor, who held the check and was to direct where to dump the soil. I also left a note on our door. Did the driver get the neighbor? NO. Daniel said by the time he put shoes on after seeing the truck pull up, the guy had already dumped the soil - ON TOP OF THE GRAVEL. Well, not entirely on top of, but overlapping.


What is the point of ordering screened soil only to have it delivered on top of gravel? And it could have seriously compromised our ~$1000 shed base. Soil should not be mixing with that gravel, or covering that wood. Plus, it added a LOT of work to separate the two, and resulted in a pile of tainted gravel/soil.


Seth was really irate about this. Today (Monday) I went to the city's public works office to express our displeasure. The director apologized and returned my check to me, which I thought was excellent of him. They give away 5 yards of this stuff in the spring to each resident, so I guess it doesn't cost them much money, but I still appreciate his gesture and the fact that he listened to my gripe about the delivery.

So after getting the soil on Friday, we rented a rototiller on Saturday from United Rentals in Bladensburg. We didn't till much on Saturday; we mostly separated gravel. We did run the sprinkler on the lawn to soften it up so the tiller would have a chance of going though it on Sunday. We just got a 5hp Honda front tine tiller. They had a mega one that was a true rear tine, but we wanted to try the smaller/cheaper one first. Thanks Sharon for lending us your truck!

The tiller worked, with lots of effort. The handles were a little low, so it strained Seth's back to run it. But we got it through (good soil has already been spread on the left side of the image).


George came over and helped spread soil and even out the gravel, too. Thanks, George! His payment for labor: beer and wings during the Steelers game. :)

And finally, after missing the Bills game, we had a shaped, even, planted yard:

I can't wait until it's green and we can enjoy a day in our backyard.

belated pics of new driveway

It's been a while since we've had the new driveway, but I know that I never posted pictures of it finished. It so much nicer than the old driveway. There's no scraping the cars, and it looks much better. (the scraggly bushes you see in the yard are gone now, and the yard/weeds are cleaned up). Luckily, our drive is next to a fire hydrant (you can see the yellow paint in the second picture), or else the city would have made us expand the apron, which would have cost a couple thousand extra.

So the drive looks great, but we're still really unhappy about all the sand and rubble the contractors dumped in our back yard. And they didn't do a great job about grading the yard, which they said they would, and the driveway is actually a bit higher than the ground in the back instead of level, and it's almost level with the basement windows. So they didn't dig the drive low enough. Overall, not too impressed with their work, but it's still an improvement over the old drive.

New Roof

As a reminder from our first post, here is a picture of the house when we bought it:


And here the house with a new roof:

You can also see how much cleaner the house looks with all the debris (trees, fence, etc) removed. I really like this picture of the house.

We went with the same company we saw do a roof down the street, American Home Contractors. We got charcoal color shingles, regular style. I like the darker color that matches with the occasional dark brick in the house. The shade from the trees will keep it from getting too hot, along with the vent along the top of the house. The dark color also keeps it from looking dirty and stained after a few months. Looking at it now, I kind of wish we had gotten the architectural shingles, but ah well. Along with the roof, they replaced the gutters and trim under the gutters. They replaced the basement windows, too, but I don't have any good before-and-after pictures of those.

I think it looks so much better!

New Paver Patio

We have a new patio! It's beautiful. Seth has been working hard the last two weeks on getting this done. Last Saturday he and Justin and Frank dug out the base. Digging is not easy work! Here's a picture of the hole they dug: (Seth is covering up the drainpipe in the pic)



And here is the patio framed in. Seth chose to frame it with 4x4s.



Side note: When the contractors were here redoing our driveway, they also redid our top basement step because they saw that it was all cracked (we were out of the state, and they just did it for us without asking). When Seth and Justin and Frank dug out the back, they exposed the bottom it. I see that it's just a bunch of bricks piled, then cement poured on top. Is this how it's supposed to be? I feel like this looks wrong, but I don't know how cementing works.

Anyway, back to the patio:

During the week Seth used Frank's truck (thank you Frank!!!) to haul gravel, then sand, then the pavers. He's been working on it in the mornings before work (he works 3-11 right now, which works out well with building the patio). That truck was seriously loaded down - we're grateful that Frank let us borrow it. Seth must be super sore from all the shoveling all week.

After shoveling the sand onto it, Seth used a 2x4 to even it out.


Home Depot was supposed to deliver the pavers last Wednesday, but the guy who was our contact didn't show up to work. When Seth talked to him on Thursday, the guy said they couldn't be delivered until Friday. Well, Seth really wanted to get started, so he just used Frank's truck to haul them back. We didn't finish laying them on Thursday, so we stacked the remainder in the driveway before returning Frank's truck. (It was a LOT of pavers! A skid and a half)



And here is Seth putting in the first corner:

Finished!

Well, finished, round 1. After looking at it the next day, Seth decided that it was too wavy and uneven. So he took every stone out and relaid the whole thing, this time using EMT rails and a 2x4 to level the sand.


Here is finished, round 2:

We still have to sweep sand over the whole thing to lock the pavers in place. But it's wonderful! I'm looking forward to grilling on it. (we'll also be fixing the rest of the yard, but one step at a time).

Check out the kayak rack Seth built

He's awesome. I was so impressed when this was finished. We bought a couple of pressure treated 6x6s, some 2x4s, huge bolts, and fence post holders from Home Depot. He cut the pieces with his reciprocating saw, which didn't make the most accurate cuts, but it works (and we have a circular saw now). At first, he wanted to use metal L brackets to hold the "shelves" up, but the guy at Home Depot thought they would rust (although their picnic tables use metal brackets, but the wood braces work).



In his planning, he kind of wanted the shelves to be on the front and back, so we could fit three kayaks. I think that he and Justin actually started building it that way, then changed and did this. If Seth gets a fishing kayak, we'll figure something out then. (the red one is his kayak, the yellow one is mine). I just hope we have more time this summer to use them!

Right now the rack is buried (not cemented) in the back of the yard, but Seth wants to move them to the side, where water doesn't run down and collect. Once it's in its final position, we'll probably cement the posts in.

All the trees are down!

I came home from school one day to find that Seth had a field day with the chainsaw. :) He took the trees down before I could get a picture of them up and blooming, but ah well. Here is the state of chaos I came home to a few weeks ago:



and


The flowering trees that were on the right were pretty, and if there were only one white one I probably would have kept it. The yard was just too filled and messy and unkempt for me to want to keep anything. The Christmas tree you see downed on the left definitely had to go. The tall Dr. Suess tree the ladder is leaning against was another definite gotta-go. Trees had been trimmed all weird and sideways and upwards, planted in awkward random places, run into with lawn mowers, etc. So everything was cut down.




Thank you Frank for lending us your chainsaw!!!!

All the trimmings stayed in the front yard until that Saturday when we borrowed Sharon's truck to haul it to the city landfill place. The front yard now looks a LOT better opened up. We're still going to work on the front landscaping, but it's better for now.




You can see the azaleas in front, which are pretty when in bloom (although I'd rather have white than pink against the brick house). I'm still going to eventually replace them with regular evergreen bushes that are a bit more shaped and formal. And we're going to eventually put up a small brick retaining wall even with the front step, maybe with small brick pillars on either side. I don't know what other plants I want in the front, but this is a good start.

This time, Seth cut down a tree

I don't know why, but one afternoon Seth decided to just up and cut down a tree. It was the tree bordering the yard on the side, and I think the neighbor was nervous that we would drop the tree onto her house, but it came down successfully into our yard.

You can see Seth and Justin's very experienced plan of cutting down the tree. :) Justin had a rope, pulling on the tree towards the yard, and Seth was cutting it down little by little. He made sure to cut the trunk in such a way that it fell towards the yard, too. Plus, their highly sophisticated tools of a string and a reciprocating saw. (we're hopefully going to borrow Frank's chainsaw for the other trees).

Well, they got the tree down, but then had to get the trunk down. They took to it with the neighbor's sledgehammer/axe thing, and some more cuts with our saw, plus the neighbors' tree-cutting hand saws.



It eventually came down to this level:

So now we have a big hole with a stump in our yard. Our landscaping jobs are superb.

If you look closely, you can see the chisel that Seth got stuck in the stump:
We'll eventually cut out the majority of the stump, and then grind it down and fill in the hole.

Earlier today we wrapped up the branches, and we'll leave them out Tuesday for the city to pick up to turn into mulch.

Hopefully, now that the weather is getting nicer we'll spend more time getting our yard in order. Oh, and one of these days when neither of our cars is in the driveway I'll post pictures of that, now that it's finished.

One [massive] tree down

Along the curb in front of our house was a huge tree (not sure what kind of tree). It was an old tree, with huge hollow spots in it. You can see one hole about half way up in this picture, but there was one twice as large on the other side, closer to the ground. It had brittle-looking branches overhanging the street and near the house. It seemed like a dangerous tree - one good storm might have knocked half the branches off.



So we called the city in January (since it's on the curb, it belongs to them) to ask to have it cut down. They agreed, and said it would be cut down in March. Well, one day in mid March, I had parked Seth's car in the street (to get to my car which was behind his in the driveway). And, wouldn't you know it, there was a wind storm before I got back home, and branches fell down, onto Seth's car. It must have hit his car pretty hard because it dented the metal right above the door.

Thankfully, the city had their contractors out last week to cut the tree down. They came Wednesday and left this:



then came back yesterday and ground the stump. Now we have a huge pile of wood chips in our front yard:

The tree-cutters said that after the organic material decomposes, it will settle down a lot, but that it could take about a season for that to happen.

The city said that they'll plant a new tree, which is awesome. I'd like to pick a big, wide-leafed shade tree, to match the others on the street. I just have to pick which kind of tree now. and move on to all the other trees you see in the yard....

Digging in the backyard

It was really nice today and I didn't have much else to do, so I decided to do a little digging in the backyard. The target of my shovel - one of the cemented-in horseshoe poles. We know that they're horseshoe poles and not, for example, fenceposts because we found a horseshoe around one of them. First of all - why would you cement in horseshoe poles in your backyard? And the two poles were at opposite ends of a slope - one uphill and one downhill. Does that make for good horseshoes? I guess it didn't work very well, because they (whoever "they" are) tried to get rid of one of the poles. By cutting it off at ground level. You can see it in the left red circle in the picture. (click on the picture to open a larger version)



I figured that when our driveway contractor comes back with a tractor, we can ask him to knock down the intact pole. So I figured I'd dig this one up. With a little help from our neighbor Daniel (used an ax/sledgehammer to cut up a root in the way, dug a little, and lifted the actual super-heavy cement thing out of the ground - very helpful), I dug it out! It gave me a small sense of accomplishment amidst the chaos of the house.

Here's the hole that held the pole:

Here's the clump of cement that we dug out and Daniel lifted out.
As I was digging this out, though, I found another cemented in post! Right next to it! It was completely underground between the original post and the cut-off root (right red circle in above picture). So I started to dig that one out, but then got tired. I'll see what the tractor can do next week.

Here is the second cement clump. Daniel also chopped out that plant (right red circle in pic).


I honestly don't know what people were thinking who owned this house before us.

Thought this would be a post about the basement, huh?

We've been working on the basement, but we've also been talking to a contractor about redoing our driveway. We had the worst driveway in the neighborhood, and we had to drive in really really carefully or else we would scrape the bottoms of our cars - and even then we still scraped about half the time. Plus it was cracking all over and was made of crappy materials. So we knew we needed a new driveway. Our neighbor was talking to a guy about extending his driveway, and supposedly there is a discount if you get your driveway done at the same time as a neighbor (to reduce the cost of bringing in and pouring the concrete - kind of like buying in bulk). So we're having our driveway repaved at the same time that we're working on the basement.

We decided to fly to Michigan for a holiday weekend to see my family. We had intended to fly out Wednesday December 19th when plane tickets were really cheap, but we thought that our driveway was going to be worked on that day. So we delayed - but no driveway. We delayed flying out until Friday December 28th. Bad timing, though - on Thursday the 27th our contractor showed up and said that he would be tearing up the driveway on Friday. Crap! We had really wanted to be here while that happened. We didn't like the idea of being out of the state while this was being done. But we had already bought the tickets, so we couldn't delay that, and it didn't seem like there was an option to delay the driveway (remember we're new at all this, so we're probably making lots of mistakes along the way).

To get a new driveway, first they tear out the old driveway and dig down into the grade. Then they come back another day to pour. The contractor, Alex, agreed to tear out our concrete slab, too, just for the cost of disposal. Turns out it didn't have footers and that's why it couldn't be used for a garage. If we decide to build a garage later, Alex will come back to repour a new slab.

Well, we got back yesterday and saw what they had done. Here's a picture of the front of the house with the driveway dug out:

Then we looked in the back yard, and this is what we saw:
a big mud pit. We are NOT happy. We had kind of agreed to take the excess dirt from the neighbor's driveway to cut down on disposal fees, plus we needed dirt to regrade around the house (probably another mistake to agree to that). We thought it would just be about a cubic yard. Not the entire back yard. And it's all sand. As the contractors were digging, they found a bunch of sand in the soil that had to be removed. So now we have a big sand mud pit. With rubbish and bricks and stones mixed in. Not graded at all - just jumbled about. Alex said he couldn't leave it in a big pile because it would have sunk down and there was bunch of rain and this was supposed to help run the water off. He told me that after they pour, they can bring a tractor back in and take some of the dirt out and grade if we want. Even when he does that, though, he won't be able make the yard like it was. It wasn't good, but at least it had a little bit of grass and wasn't a big mud pit. So we're probably going to be landscaping earlier that we had wanted. Unless we go with Seth's idea of getting a keg and have mud wrestling fights in the backyard. :)

The neighbor is paving his drive all the way to our property line, so the fence was removed. It was a chain link fence, so I'm happy it's gone, but they left the gate for the fence. Alex said that since we weren't there he didn't want to tear down anything of ours, which I guess makes sense. But it looks so ridiculous, just that little corner of fence and the ugly bush. A friend said we should paint it red enamel to make it "artsy." :)