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." :)