No, really, it did.
We live in the city…not just inside the city limits, but in town. Yes, we could wash our neighbor’s back if we had a long scrub brush. The houses are old…ours was built in 1942 and is relatively “new” for the neighborhood. I say that only because I know that my great-grandfather built the houses across the street, and my grandmother grew up in one.
There are benefits to living in town—if the car breaks down, public transportation aka the bus stops right at the corner. Our son’s grade school was, oh, about 10-12 houses down the street—not even a block. The neighbors watch out for each other, and that’s not a thing to sneeze at! At the time, the price was perfect—it was cheaper than rent! The dh thought it’d be a good starter house. I, however, spent my entire childhood in one house and had every intention of buying a HOME, not a house. Twenty-three years later and guess what? We’re still here.
The only gripe about the place, other than the usual not enough storage space. A pack rat can never have too much space ya know. But there wasn’t any yard to speak of and there was this loooonnngggg drive way between our house and the neighbor. I don’t have many pics of that, but as you can see below – that’s a driveway butted right against the neighbor’s house – and it’s butted right against ours too.
So it sort of looks like this between the houses.
Mighty attractive, huh? And the right side of the backyard looked like this:
(yeah, yeah, I’m no graphic artist – just pretend that grey is cement for the moment).
The dh decided we were going to make a yard. It’d been something he and the neighbor had talked about for years and years, but never got around to doing. Then, after life happened and all, the neighbor passed away, leaving his house empty and boarded up for the last four years. So, the dh thought there was no time like the present.
We measured and remeasured and then being a good seamtress and carpenter’s daughter, I measured again.
The drive alone was 51 feet long X 8 feet wide. The back area was 18 feet long X 14 feet wide.
That’s nice, exactly what was I supposed to do with that information? I’m an author, not a landscaper.
Natch, the dh patiently (snort) explained we needed topsoil and sod. OHHH – SOD. Duh.
So, while he and the son chopped away at cement and blacktop, I stayed out of their way and found a couple sites on line that proved useful. Of course, none of the sites agreed on how much topsoil was supposed to go beneath the sod. 2 inches, 3 inches…one of the local gardening centers said 1 inch was plenty. Kewl – considering they price this stuff by cubic yards I was all for the 1 inch concept. The dh and I haggled, agreeing on 1.5 inches. Off to a topsoil calculator site – it can be used for mulch too!
http://clearwaterlandscapes.com/calculator.htm
The total square for our yard was….51X8=408 AND 18X14=252 SO 408+252=660 square feet.
I plugged that in, along with the 1.5 inches for the topsoil and it calculated out just over 3 cubic feet.
DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH 3 CUBIC FEET OF DIRT IS??????
Well, it was double what we needed. Thankfully we have neighbors who were willing to truck on down to the house with their wheelbarrows and get rid of the left overs!
Now for the sod…
Found this site to calculate that info:
http://www.emeraldsodfarms.com/How-Much-Sod.htm
Plugged in the 51X8 AND the 14X18 and it came up with 660 Sq. Feet or 1.22 pallets. The sod farm will only deliver full pallets. We flipped a coin and ordered 2….uh huh, you guessed it—too much—there’s 55 pieces of sod on a pallet. We used about 90. Again, the neighbors to the rescue! YAAAYYYY!
While the stimulus check is now history, we have this for a backyard:
Standing in the back looking down the “drive” toward the street:
From the back door (yeah, yeah, without the grey fill in! And the fence has been painted white.)
And from the back corner:
I have to admit it was well worth the time, work and expense.
Now…if I could just con someone into a pool……
Until next time, take care and be well.
Diva Denise Lynn
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