Garden Plan

I figured I should at least try to remember all the various things we planted since I’m sure some may not make an appearance next year.  I went through and inventoried all of the various plant tags and tried to indicate where we planted them.  My memory is a little fuzzy on a couple of them, but hopefully I captured most everything.

There are still quite a few plants that we planted but aren’t pictured.  Those are:

• Japanese Blueberry Tree (Shogun series)
• Nugget hops
• Hydrangea Endless summer (Bailmer)
• Rhus typina Tiger eyes sumac (Bailtiger)
• Shasta daisy
• Calla Lilly
• Cinese Lantern Physalis
• Phoenix Red penstemon
• Salvia greggii

Hopefully everything makes it through this winter!  I’ll try to capture the same image again next year.

-H

1845…and 1/2

I originally wrote this post on what turned out to be a very sad day.  Our Corgi, Porter, passed away very unexpectedly.  He didn’t get nearly enough time to enjoy his house and he is missed very much.  We hope that Bogey, our Yorkipoo will still use the house and we will think of Porter every time we see it.

Porter, the Corgi, loves to spend time outside – no matter the weather.  While the new backyard is great for that, it also means that he hangs out in the rain and mud and then comes inside bringing all that with him.  In order to keep him happy outside… and keep our inside as dry and mud-free as possible, we decided to make him a dog house.  We used leftover materials from the deck and fence projects so the only things we needed to get were roofing shingles (I remembered later that we threw some away during the garage demo… oh well) and flashing.  Other than that, it was a free-to-us project!

Trex base and 4×4 framing

Framing complete!

Cedar plank siding and front porch

Finished house!

Porter checking out his new place

Current spot for the dog house. It weighs a TON, so Alex and I couldn’t move it to the spot where it will ultimately go, but it works here for now!  We need some strong friends to come over to help us move it in to place 🙂

-H

Ta-Done!

Well…we’re done!! It’s been a couple of weeks since the last post, but it’s because we took some time to actually enjoy all of our hard work 🙂

After the rainstorm & flooded basement debacle, we spent the next couple of days finishing up the deck skirting and planting. Then called it finished for the year. This means that we didn’t finish everything we thought we would (cable rail for the deck, concrete patio, etc…) but we got most everything done:

• Demolish existing deck and garage
• Re-build deck and add new stairs and railing (have a wood rail in place but wanted to do a cable rail – this may have to wait until next year)
• Build new fence and gate
• Break out concrete, add drainage (just in case), build retaining wall, fill with dirt and plant garden and raised beds
• Add irrigation and lighting
• Repair and stain concrete patio (this will have to be next year)

To remind you, this is where we started:

And 6 weeks later, we had this:  

It was a long, hot summer, but we have such a great space to enjoy the (hopefully) few weeks of nice weather this year!

So backyard is done…for now 🙂

-H

Two steps forward, one step back

We arrived home Friday afternoon during the first major rainstorm this summer to 4″ of water in the basement. It was pouring in through the electrical conduit pipe that we had cut off during the garage demo. It was run out there to provide electrical for the garage. It ended up getting buried basically under the retaining wall and when water built up after the rain, it started running through the conduit – directly into the basement! 

 

that little thing in the back is the garden-end of the conduit…under the retaining wall!

 
It was so frustrating to have done all this a hard work and have to deal with this issue. Luckily we figured out right away what the source was and got to work trying to stop it. Poor Alex was out there in the pouring rain digging and trying to rig something up to stop the water flow.

 

The poor guy also got shocked by the electrical extension cord we were using out there as well! 

We were able to use the shop-vac to drain the water so it would stop pouring in and brainstormed over dinner with my dad.  We still didn’t have any great ideas when we went to bed cold, exhausted and discouraged on Friday night.

Saturday morning my dad came back with some plugs and roofing sealant – so we plugged up both sides of the conduit and covered the exterior end with concrete. 

Fingers crossed our solution prevents this from happening again! 

-h

Are we there yet?

We’ve made some great progress, but still lots left to do:

• Re-build deck and add new stairs and railing (partially complete – need to add deck skirting and railing, which is dependent on electrical work)

• Build new fence and gate (mostly complete – need to finish off top of fence)

• Break out concrete, add drainage (just in case), build retaining wall, fill with dirt and plant garden and raised beds (Partially complete, need to get plants in the ground!)

A car full of plants!

• Add irrigation and lighting (bids in progress)
  • Hoping to get the electrician out this week to add either 2 sconces on either side of the sliding door or a single floodlight (whichever is do-able & cost effective) AND add an exterior outlet (maybe also add one in front?)
  • The plumber came by to give me a quote to move the hose bib. This is step 1 in the irrigation plan. I’m thinking of using this one.

• Repair and stain concrete patio (Still to-do, see the new plan for this area)

My hope is to mostly finish this by mid-August. Hopefully we can pull it off! -H

Concrete plans

Originally I was thinking that I would resurface the ~400sq.ft concrete patio with stamped concrete to look like bluestone.  I had someone come out to give me a bid, but it came out to $5,000.  If this was a permanent solution, I might be more open to that, but since that’s not the case, I wanted to find a more cost-effective solution.

We looked at several options including:

• Restore 10X concrete coating (or the Lowe’s version)
• Patching and staining

But then my parents were in Eastern WA over the weekend and stopped in at the Mazama Store, and saw this in their back patio area:

I love the look of this!  So… I think this is going to be the new plan. We actually had rented a concrete grinder for the day to start the patching process, but didn’t use it since now we need to actually rent a jackhammer to widen some of the existing cracks and create new ones.  We’ll see how this turns out!

-H

Fencing it in

The next step after we filled in the dirt patch was to build the fence.  We had set most of the poles a couple of weeks ago, but there were still two between the neighbor’s garage and the asphalt parking area, and one attached to the neighbor’s garage left to finish.  Alex put the two in the middle up using E-Z post bases.  The guys who had broken up the concrete had pre-drilled these into the concrete for us. Unfortunately, they melted some of the anchors making these bases really difficult to use. Not so easy 😜.  In order to make them work, Alex and Jamie ended up cementing them to the concrete and now they’re fairly strong.

Then we had to go through and ensure that each of the posts were plumb. My parents and brother stopped by during that time so my dad provided guidance on how to do this.

The next step was to use the builders level to create a level line across the whole fence and used that line to set horizontal 2x4s across the top and bottom of the fence.  These will be visible from the outside of the fence.

The next step was to nail all the fence boards in place, leaving a small gap between boards to ensure they have space to expand and contract.  We also used a product called the easy gate, which is intended to make building a gate pretty straightforward.  It wasn’t too bad, but I did get a bit frustrated since I had to make several adjustments along the way.

By the end of a long, hot Seafair Saturday, we had a fence!

We decided to install them following ground level so we still need to cut the straight line across the top and cut the 4x4s down to all be at the same height, but it was a pretty good day’s work!

-H

We have a dirt patch!

We made some pretty good progress this week!

Once we took out the garage and removed the concrete, we realized that we have some pretty serious clay soil that could cause drainage issues in the future. So, to be proactive, we decided to lay the foundation for a french drain system.  We didn’t actually connect it to any drain lines, but can in the future if we need to.  We had 4 cu. yards of drain rock delivered and went through the backbreaking work of spreading it around to create downward sloping areas for the perforated tubing to run out of the garden.

Progress one evening after work

We laid this out in the shape of a backwards “E.” Once the slope was created (1/8-1/4″ of vertical drop for every 1′ of linear distance,) we covered the perforated tube with more drain rock.

2/3 of the way there

Then, we covered all of the tubing / gravel with a layer of landscape fabric, so by Friday morning it looked like this:

Then we had 10 cu. yards of topsoil blend delivered. I selected the blend that contains a mixture of peat moss, topsoil and something else because the woman from Pacific Topsoil said that it would help with potential drainage issues.

Alex and Jamie are kings of the dirt

1 hour of hard-core shoveling later, it looked like this:

  
It looks like a great blank-slate for our future garden!  Phew – that was a ton of work, but I think it will add so much livability to this space.  Next steps – fence, finishing the deck and doing the concrete.

-H

Mid-way budget update

Well here we are about 3 weeks into the project. To remind you, my goal is to stay under $13,000 for this project. Here’s where we are:

Supplies: $3,143.19

There are some things that will get returned and I think conservatively we probably have another $1,500 left to purchase.

Hauling: $1,323.29 

We’ve had 70 yards of debris hauled away! This price doesn’t include the dumpster from this weekend which I’m guessing is around $500-700.

Labor: $1,550.80

Includes Jaymie’s time and the concrete breaking. Probably have at least 1-2 more days of labor to pay for.

Misc. other: $787

Includes the electrical shutoff and demo permit.

Total: $6,504.28

Looking forward, we may come in close, but it’s going to be tight:

Gravel & dirt: $1,000

Hauling (done but not included in above): $700

Tool rental and additional labor: $600

Concrete dye: $100 

Additional supplies: $1,500 (less any credit for returned supplies)

Plumbing & electrical: $1,500

Irrigation & lighting: $500

Landscape: $700+ this is sort of the whatever’s left over and if I want to spend a bit more section.

That would bring us right to $13,000!  Hopefully we can stay on track and can bring this project in on-budget!

-H

Weekend progress

A dumpster (the second of this backyard renovation) was scheduled to be delivered on Friday morning, but it just never showed…at 2pm I called and was assured it would be there in time for work Saturday morning. We left for dinner with friends Friday evening with no dumpster and when we returned home around 10pm it still wasn’t there. So I was in for a major surprise Saturday morning when I woke up around 7 to a dumpster parked in front of our house, blocking most of the alley! We knew our neighbors were not going to be happy with us so we made some urgent phone calls to Bobby Wolford Trucking (dumpster rental) and they dispatched someone to come move it to a more reasonable location. Apparently by the time they got here at 8:30AM, the police had already been called and put in a call directly to their dispatch. Thankfully we were able to move it over enough so cars could get through the alley.

 

dumpster in its final location

 
Alex’s friend Jaymie came and helped us again on Saturday as did my dad and brother, Ben. Alex, Jaymie and Ben (mostly Alex and Jaymie) cleared out the broken concrete in under 3 hours. It was pretty amazing – and incredibly hard work.

 

hard at work!

  

look at all those rocks!

  

Ben discovered a coca-cola bottle in the foundation of the garage

 
Meanwhile, my dad and I were hard at worklaying the trex for the new deck. We started with the stairs and moved on to the deck itself. We had a few areas that had to be cut out but everything came together nicely. I even did a quick stucco repair to the side of the house before putting the last deck board on.

 

a few boards down

 
 

finished product!

 
After the boys finished emptying the concrete area. They went to work building a retaining wall to separate the asphalt parking area from the future garden area. They laid the railroad ties and 2x8s and then hammered 2ft re-bar through the wood the ground to hold it in place. They also used spikes to nail the pieces together. It was just like John Henry 🙂

 

retaining wall complete

So that’s where we are! The deck still needs siding and railings, and we need to get gravel delivered (scheduled for today) so we can stub (put in place but not actually use) our French drain lines. Then we will be getting dirt delivered, fixing the concrete and building a fence.  We’re not quite in the home stretch, but I am starting to see that there is a finish line not too far away!
Also, an update on the rainwise – I started the perc test last Friday. You’re supposed to fill the hole you dug a series of times and watch how long it takes to drain. 

 

the failed perc test

 
In order for your house to qualify, your soil has to drain a minimum of 1/4″ / hour. Well…I filled the hole with 12″ of water around 8AM Friday morning and 72 hours later it has drained a total of 5″. So, needless to say we won’t qualify!

-H