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

The sort-of grand plan

Well I figured It’s time to visualize the backyard plan! The existing backyard (which you’ve seen pictures of here) is laid out like this: 

  
Unfortunately, visuals can have limits. The concrete area actually goes underneath the existing deck and is pretty level and in decent shape. The asphalt area slopes toward the garage(!) though, which has a sump pump that flushes everything into the alley.

The goal is to make it more usable with some deck and patio areas as well as a bit more room for plants and maybe some grass.  We’re thinking something like this😀:

  
Since I haven’t made my mind up about the plans for the future garage, we’re going to create a gravel area for parking off of the alley so that we have some off-street parking. The rest of the yard is fenced in, but because the garage is coming down, we’ll need to put up a temporary fence around the gravel area to keep the dogs in.  We also haven’t yet gotten rid of the exterior basement stairs (and yes – they’re actually that narrow), so we’ll have to temporarily fence that off as well so we don’t have any people or dogs accidentally falling 8 ft down!

The main thing we’re actually planning to construct is a replacement deck. Here’s a 3D version of the deck plan to help visualize it:

  

I would also love to have a bluestone patio instead of using the existing concrete slab – but I haven’t really considered it because I think just what I’ve outlined here may break the bank!

Because we’re mostly just taking things out and not adding a lot, you’d think this could be relatively inexpensive – but I’m doubting it more and more as we talk to contractors and subs this week. We’ll see though! I’m hoping to start to get bids back in the next couple of days!

-H