Removing a cement pad

This has been an exhausting weekend. I bought hollies last week at McLean Nurseries, so now I need to prepare the back of the yard to plant them. This means removing the cement pad that a previous owner put in, I think for a fountain that never worked. It was about 4'x8', and maybe 5" deep, with a border of cinderblocks. I really wish we had removed two years ago, when it was exposed. A layer of dirt and rubble has accumulated over it that I had to shovel away. Then I went to United Rentals to rent a jackhammer.


This was my progress after a Saturday:



Daniel helped get me started, and helped for a couple hours between World Cup games on Sunday. After two days, here is the resulting hole, and pile of cement chunks (the city doesn't come get them until Thursday, so I can't put them on the curb until Wednesday).




And one more pile of rubble:


In breaking up the pad, we found some nice pavers and buckets of nice stones.


I ended the evening by making this cake.

Let me just say, though, that I do not like doing all this labor myself. You know who you are....

Google Maps Street View of Our House!

So this is a little creepy. We discovered yesterday that Google Maps street view has a very up to date picture of our house. You can see the fence we're putting in and the new trees the city planted. If the cat were in the window, you'd be able to see him, too. This is weird.

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.