Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Tackling Our Front Garden Project

This weekend was a busy one for us. A while back we decided that we needed to do something with our front hillside. It was very difficult to mow due to the grade of the slope... Here are some before pics to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

As you can see, besides having the slope to deal with, we also had a very uneven front walk in need of some TLC. This project was no small task and we knew it. So we invited my parents (who are skilled in the art of moving rocks) to come and help us tackle the project in one short weekend...

We scheduled our plans for "a weekend in September with no rain". We succeeded with no rain but Saturday was terribly hot. We got up early and were out working on the yard at 7:30am. I was surprised to have Josh up that early, especially on a Saturday! We started with the heavy manual labor of removing all of the grass and removing and stacking the 2' x 2' x 2" thick pavers. We were really glad to have that all done by around 10:30am when the heat started to kick in.

With everything cleared we started to dig a trench for the retaining wall. We left the guys to tackle that task and my mom and I went off to the wonderful world of Lowe's for the first run of the day. We picked up 4x6x8 pressure-treated lumber and rebar for the retaining wall along with bags of stone dust to level our walkway. Once we had our heavy load we headed back to the house to help with the next stage of the project.

















We did take a break for lunch before we continued digging. After lunch we determined how high we wanted the walkway to be, leaving it slightly slanted to allow water to runaway from the house. Once we had this done we were able to see how much more we needed to dig to get he top of the retaining wall in line with the top of the walkway. We dug A LOT!

At around 5pm we were tired and hot, so we decided to call it a day, take showers and get some food! It is amazing how a little food and a shower make you feel great after a day of hard work. We all went to bed early (around 9:30pm) to be well rested for another early day! I know I slept like a log!

Our Sunday morning started out just as early. Mom and Dad went to work laying the stone walk and Josh and I tackled the the hillside with topsoil, gardeners cloth, and mulch. Planting hostas and day lilies that my mom brought from her garden. The lilies were originally from my great grandmothers's garden. We are very happy with the outcome. It was well worth the hard work!

For images of the process and the final outcome check out the following link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/davcroy/AmyAndJoshGardenWalkProject

2 comments:

Leslie said...

I haven't checked out your blog in a bit and just saw this post - WOW!! See, you're the type of person who just puts us to shame, since we would have probably considered it enough work just to get 1/4 of that done in a weekend. It looks seriously fantastic. I hope you had enough Ben Gay to get you through the rest of the week!

Anonymous said...

Wow! I really love all the improvements that you are making. You're doing a great job! Plus, it helps raise my own property values. Thanks! *grin*