Back Yard Landscaping - four days of moving dirt and finished! *Updated*

We've had a difficult landscaping situation out back since we moved into this house.  The walkways were gravel, weeds, and stones.  It has been an ongoing battle keeping up with the weeds.

Ongoing Backyard Landscaping

I took care of a fairly minor project today.  I didn't have a lot of time or I would have accomplished quite a bit more.  Even though it was pretty minor task, I still got pretty hot and sweaty.

Backyard Landscaping

We've been in this house for over six years now.  I've wanted to work on the back yard for a long time, but other issues have been more pressing, and the household budget is always a consideration!

This past week we finally got serious about it.

2.5 Days

After I come off night shift, I get 2.5 days off.  This also was busy!  After sleeping for the first half of the day afer getting off work at 6:00 AM, I woke up to take Grace for her first visit to an orthodontist.  The orthodontist recommended two-stage orthodontic correction. The first phase is a starts with two baby teeth extractions, followed by a 12 month palate-widening process to make room for the crowding that will be created by the emergence of much larger adult teeth. She already has crowding issues, and more adult teeth are not going to help.  Fortunately my dental insurance covered the first $1500 of that, so we just paid the remainder of Phase 1.

Afterwards we went to a movie that Grace wanted to see. We watched "Brave", which was cute. The next day Corie and I shoved stones up against the new curb, and cleaned up the soil and rocks that were dug up when we had the curb poured.

Before we went to work on it, the stones were all rolled out into the driveway and there was a long pile of dirt in front of the curb.  We spent a lot of effort removing the soil and "ankle twisters", as I call the 2-3 inch rocks, moving large stones to hide the curb, and replacing gravel.  A big job for a couple of old people!

However, now the raw edge of the curb is hidden, the gravel and the grass are separated, and I don't have to weed whack the grass from between each rock.  I just run it along the inside of the curb.  Looks pretty clean, I think.

Landscaping

Landscaping around the house - final report:  This stuff is gone.  The pile of heavy concrete sticks are buried.

 



I am not sure what these things were used for.  They were heavy-gauge PVC filled with concrete, and they had a braided steel cable running through them... odd items that I had no use for.  They are now buried.

 

 



Truck bed full of junk.  Gone.

Thanks for the help getting rid of the concrete sticks, Charlie!!!

And the front of the house went from this: (Love all the gravel on the grass that got shoveled along with the snow!!!)

To this:

Time to start sharing photos of the basement repaint.

Sidewalk improvement

The original walkway looked like this:

The new sidewalk looks like this: (That's Jerry Nash and his helper Luke from High Country Concrete - the guys who did all the work)

Note how the boulders are now placed in front of the house.  The grass will be replaced shortly, when the sod comes in.