Backyard fun and stress at the same time! Dave is a great sport, seeing h0w he get's to do 99.9% of the work himself. I make myself useful as a cheerleader, drill Sargent, shoveling gravel or packing (heavy, heavy, heavy) bricks from one place to another.
Our backyard is on a steep hill, made of clay and has a huge city pipe running lengthwise through our yard. Most people probably take for granted how easy their backyards are to finish. With the hill it adds a lot of complications.
Complication #1. . . water. . . clueless neighbors who send all their water our way. . . bees that like the mushy clay drenched in water. . . basement flooding due to water, etc. To solve our water problem, we have put in 2 drains, along the length of our backyard. This was heaven sent. We covered our drains with this cloth stuff you can buy at home depot to keep the dirt out and on top of that we put in gravel. This immediately solved our water issues. We are planning on putting in two more sets of drains on top.
Complication #2. . . what on earth do you do with a backyard that is on a steep hill??? My husbands original answer was to get rid of all the dirt. So he rented a tractor and went to work trying to get rid of a ton or two of dirt. It was working rather well for him, that is until he hit the big city pipe. The pipe wasn't disclosed to him when he bought our house, so of course he had no idea until he ran into it. That changed his plans from getting rid of a lot of dirt to dealing with the dirt.
I really like plan # 2 he came up with. We are going to have two tiers (retaining walls) with stairs in the middle to lead to what little grass we can have on top. We have our first wall done and are currently working on the second wall. The bottom layer is the hardest. Dave has to make sure everything is level. It's fun to watch him work, I know I would never be able to figure it out myself.
So I will take pictures for you throughout our backyard process. We are hoping to get the second wall done this year.
ha ha ha that's funny that you say "backyard (or nightmare)
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