Well, of the six landscapers I called…
…one was so busy he couldn’t schedule an estimate for 3 weeks at the earliest
…one never bothered showing up to the scheduled appointment
…two came to give an estimate, but never bothered to actually send it to me
…two sent me a written estimate
So we are trying to decide between the two. I’ll update more as we make the decision!
I am in the midst of gathering estimates from landscapers for our backyard. The general plan seems to be to put in a catch basin at the part near the corner of the house (and where the foundation is cracked) to collect all the stormwater, and then send it in underground piping to the creek at the back of our property. We also will grade the entire yard and either lay seed or sod.
Lanscaper #1 came on Friday a week ago, and gave me an estimate. It included underground pipes (also hooking the two downspouts to the pipe, sending all the runoff to the creek), killing all the weeds in the yard, grading everything, then laying down fescue sod. He said that they have to lay fescue no later than April 15th, so we can’t dawdle on the decision. Another option is zoysia grass, but we’d need to cut down some of the branches that make our backyard so shady. Since we don’t want to spend the money on that now, we’re fine with fescue.
Landscaper #2 came last Monday. He was 45 minutes late and didn’t apologize at all. He suggested a ditch of sorts (he called it something else, but I’m blanking right now) and of course grading. I can’t remember whether it was sod or seed. He promised a quote by Wednesday, but I have yet to receive it. I wasn’t as impressed with him, so I don’t think I’ll try to follow up. (I don’t understand why people take the time to come all the way out, and then never give a quote.)
Landscaper #3 was supposed to come on Tuesday. I waited 2 hours but he never showed, and I had to run errands. He gets crossed off in my book.
Landscaper #4 came on Wednesday. He was very nice, and very approachable with all my questions. He said something similar as Landscaper #1, but he looked at our foundation and said we shouldn’t put our money towards sod right now. He suggested seed, and then we’d reseed in September. He was very concerned with keeping our price down. He called with a verbal quote later that day – about two-thirds of what landscaper #1 said. I’m sad, though – I had visions of a beautiful yard, of being able to play out there before the weather got too hot… I guess the smart thing is to lay seed, but I selfishly wanted to make something really nice! Oh well. He promised to send over the written quote, but I haven’t gotten it yet.
Landscaper #5 is due to come on Wednesday of next week. We’ll see what he says; hopefully he’ll have a solution because I really like to have three estimates to choose from. We had the same trouble with the foundation – I searched for companies but ended up with only two estimates. Others came by but either said they couldn’t help or they never sent over their quote. Again, I don’t understand that, but Landscaper #4 told me that it’s common in the business. I guess the economy isn’t that bad for them!
Hopefully we’ll get this taken care of before too long. It’s been storming badly today and this evening, and I just imagine the water washing away more important dirt from the foundation. We also need to put up gutters along where the sunporch used to be. I know, we’re terrible! It’s so hard to keep on top of all the things we are supposed to be doing.
I will update after next Wednesday, with hopefully another estimate. :-)
Spring is here and curb appeal is on our minds. :-) (Can’t you tell? After this post and this post? :-)) The weather has gotten warmer and the spring rains are upon us, and my attention has turned to the backyard as our next big project. We’ve been debating for months about which to do first – the backyard or the foundation. The foundation is very important, but the issues in the backyard are contributing to the foundation problems.
We ultimately decided to take care of the backyard now, because we are concerned that the foundation will continue to get worse while we are saving up the money if we don’t fix the cause of the problem. The good news is we have the money now to take care of that. The bad news is it will put us that much farther back in our savings for the foundation repairs. Isn’t that life?
I have turned my attention to finding a landscaper. Here’s what we plan to do:
* debris/brush removal and grade the entire backyard
* install some sort of drainage solution to divert the stormwater away from the house and into a creek at the back of the property
* plant grass or sod to create a kid-friendly play area in the backyard
The result will hopefully have added benefits of reducing the mosquito population, and giving us a place to spend time outdoors. The backyard is mostly fenced in, so it’s a safer place for toddlers than hanging out in the side yard, as the road that runs by our house is fairly busy (especially during the early afternoon when parents are headed to and from the elementary school that’s two blocks away). Also, when this is done, I hope to put up a clothesline for some eco-friendly clothes and diaper drying!
Now, just to find a landscaper that does all that.
Okay, I am going to attempt a challenge for myself this week. We’ll see how this goes, as in the past I’m not very good at challenges. :-)
For the next 7 days (this upcoming week), I am going to spend 30 minutes a day outside, picking up pine cones, small branches, and raking leaves. (Yes we never really raked the leaves from last fall. I know, our yard looks terrible.)
Picking up pine cones and raking up pine needles is an endless job in our neighborhood, and I get bummed before I even start. I’m hoping that by breaking it into 30 minute increments, I’ll be less overwhelmed and the yard will look *that* much better.
The only exception is if it rains, which should just be Tuesday. Otherwise, I’ll be outside every day for at least 30 minutes. This counts as exercise, right? I’ll try to remember to take before and after pictures, in case there’s a noticeable difference. (I filled four 30 gallon bags of leaves this afternoon and you can hardly tell.)
Paul and his brother spent some time in the backyard this week, cleaning up all the debris. I wish I had a before picture, but it looks so much better. There was a huge pile of sticks, and it’s much smaller now. Also, 5 bags of pine straw are now sitting at the curb waiting to be picked up by the city tomorrow.
There is a lot of debris behind the shed, like an old tire, a gas canister, and a bunch of trash. It’s going to take a little bit to get the yard looking completely better, but this is a start.
I was going to wait until the backyard was completely done to show pictures, but I’m worried that we’re not going to be able to finish it anytime soon because of a lack of money. So I’ll go ahead and put up the pictures now, and do a big before/after post later. :-)
The side of our house, with the porch gone!
Removing the structure revealed some of the foundation issues we’re having.
What the back of our house looks like now. You can see the cement stoop that was originally there.
We would like to make this into a nice little patio area, by using patio stones and/or gravel. We’d like to have a place for a table and chairs and also a grill. I’m even thinking of that marking off the area with some sort of pergola and lighting would be really nice!
Underneath the deck we found some containers that were full of water. Once we got rid of them, the mosquito problem was a lot less. However, it’s not completely gone. We are also having a wasp problem – we found 3 nests in the roof of the sunporch, so they are flying around trying to find new a nest. This makes it still hard to be outside.
I’m also unsure about what to do with the fence. Ideally, I’d love to take down that section and put a new one in that follows the property line. I did some research, and it seems that with chain-link, just “moving” it over a few feet is not easy at all. Some of the research I’ve done says that it’s very worth it hiring a professional, versus DYI. Hmm, more money. Not sure.
Paul thinks we should just leave as is. I am thinking of squatter’s rights laws, and I think that it’s important to have a fence on the boundaries of your property – for both you and your neighbor, and also for future owners of either house. If it was just crooked, I wouldn’t worry about it, but the whole jutting in thing makes a different in my opinion. Maybe we could just replace that section of the fence, though that might not be an option. Still thinking about it.
Next up (as much as we have money…):
1) Fix house foundation
2) Replace insulation in crawlspace
3) Grade & sod backyard
We got our land surveyed yesterday! I’m so happy to know exactly where the property line is, and now we just need to figure out what to do about our fence.
The fence along the back (?) of our property is true to the line; we’ve never questioned that. The fence that runs up the side yard in between us and our neighbors is the one in question. From what the surveyor said, it starts out on the property line, and then slowly deviates. Not sure if this was intentional or just poor planning on the original owners’ part.
From this picture, you can see the fence has moved to about a foot into our yard. (This is our fence, BTW – not the neighbor’s fence.)
By the time it gets past the house, it’s quite a bit off. The piece of fence that the pink thing is tied to belongs to our neighbor. Our fence is the post on the far right. I think you’d have to see it to understand what’s going on – it’s so hard to explain! But yeah, you can see how far over they are – and if we’re able to restore the fence to its correct position, it would really help with the water flow.
Today I turned in the permit to City Hall to demolish our porch. It was $250! I can’t believe I have to pay that much to take down something that’s not up to code anyways. They said they would call this week and set up an appointment for someone to come inspect it. I wasn’t expecting this, so now I’m paranoid that they’re not going to let us remove the porch for some reason. My dramatic-mind is going through all sorts of scenarios…
So, some updates on what’s going on as we try to move forward with our immediate plans.
Once the survey work is complete, then we will apply for the “building permit”. Once we’re okay with that, we’ll get my uncle to start taking down the porch. In the meantime we’ll start stripping the porch of things that we want to Freecycle.
Here’s the plan for the rest of the summer, hoping to complete this before it gets cold in the fall. I’m praying that we have enough money.
This will take care of the foundation problem, and also the water problem. (And taking care of the latter will help prevent future foundation problems!) An added benefit is that we’ll be able to actually enjoy our yard, free of mosquitoes and weeds. I’m really excited about these projects! I hope it doesn’t take too long to complete this list! And I hope we don’t have too many unexpected expenses, because already we are cutting it tight. (And having a $526 after-insurance hospital bill doesn’t help!) One potential expense is our fence – I’m hoping we can continue to use what is up right now (not sure how that works with grading the property, etc.), but I don’t want to ignore the possibility of having to replace it.
We had another estimate today, and also my uncle came out to inspect the porch to see how hard it would be to have him take it down.
First, the estimate was with a company that deals with foundations and water damage. The guy was really, really nice. He didn’t criticize me for the condition of our property, or my inexperience with all this stuff. (As compared to the landscaper yesterday.) He took a careful look around and agreed that taking down the porch would be the best thing. He also went through our crawlspace and said that the main supporting beam was sound; it was the pieces that connect to it that need reinforcing. He recommended we find a general contractor to take care of that. His company mostly deals with the heavy duty reinforcing – much more than our house needs. So basically, to fix our problem wouldn’t really be something their company does. But he spent a lot of time explaining what he saw to me, and giving me ideas. I really appreciated that.
He made a good point that our fence probably doesn’t follow our property line, because it zig zags. Our best guess is previous owners put the fence up, and then our neighbors just attached their fence to ours. So the next step in this project is to figure out where our property line is, getting our land surveyed if necessary. We might need to take our land back!
This afternoon my uncle came over and was encouraging. It looks like they added the room on top of the siding of the house, so that’s very good! He told us that we could start dismantling minor things, especially if we want to sell them on Craigslist or something – like all the windows, which are in decent shape (not broken, though they are single pane), the doors, and the ceiling fans.
I’m excited to see things moving! Once we get this done, then we’ll be on our way to having a nice backyard!!
Today we got the first estimate for our water drainage problem. The guy was nice, but in some ways made me feel stupid. He kept commenting on the negatives of the house – like how it is situated on the lot. We’re on a corner lot, and the front of the house is facing the corner, so it is angled to the street. The house is also sitting on the edge of the lot, so we have a HUGE side yard, a virtually nonexistant side yard on the other side, and a small-ish backyard. It wasn’t the most well-thought out plan. He said, “Did you know that when you bought it?” I was thinking sarcastically, no we bought the house sight unseen! Sheesh. Anyways.
First off, here are pictures to show better the problem, as I explained to the landscaper today.
This is a bit hard to see, but this is our neighbor’s yard. You can see how their house sits a bit higher, and the water has been flowing from their front yard to a little ditch, which heads straight to our house.
This is where the water ends up. You can see all the wild violets – they grow in moist soil, so wherever you see them in our yard is where the water is flooding. Previous owners stuck cement here to try and fix the problem, but in fact just made it worse. You can also see the deck and the porch on the back of our house. This was a poorly-constructed add-on, and goes right up to the fence. I’m pretty sure that’s not allowed, but it was probably built before they had such laws.
This is a really narrow area between the edge of our house and the neighbor’s yard, where all the water is diverted. They have put boards up on the inside of their fence to push the water into our yard.
Yep, this is how close the stupid deck thing is to the neighbor’s yard! That space is too narrow to get into and dig a ditch.
Our backyard, taken from the deck. There is a retaining wall of sorts made from cinder blocks that is falling over. The back of the property is higher than the middle, so the water pools in front of the shed. It’s also going under the porch where we can’t access and getting into the crawlspace. Behind our property is a dry creek bed where we can send the water, once we figure out how to get it. The shed is a bit in the way, though.
The landscaper had two ideas. One was to install catch basins and pipes. He was unsure how easy it would be to send through that narrow area and under the porch.
The other idea appealed to me a lot. He said they could demo the sun porch and deck, grade the whole yard, make a natural runoff for the water and put in grass. We have no love for the sunporch. It’s a nice concept, but it was poorly made and we never use it. The floor is very bowed – getting noticeably higher and lower at different areas. And most of all, I *hate* that it is so close to the property line. It’s very hard to control the weeds that spring up in the hard-to-reach areas, and so it looks a bit trashy.
Doing this would solve a lot of problems. First off, it would clean up the backyard and make it useable. Second, it would take care of the water problem. Third, those two things would really help with the terrible mosquito problem. Right now, the backyard is 100% weeds (including poison ivy), full of bugs, and pretty much unusable. I have a dream of being able to have Savannah spend time outside, but in the current state it is impossible unless I bathe her in bug spray.
Another (minor) issue is my dislike for that huge yellow shed. It takes up a lot of room and doesn’t even sit at the back of the property. It’s much bigger than we need, but it’s in good condition. I would like to get rid of it and get a smaller shed for our garden items (lawn mower, etc.) and perhaps put the smaller shed in our huge sideyard. So while we’re at it, we might as well get rid of the shed!
After the landscaper left, I mentioned on Facebook about the possibility of demoing the porch. My uncle and cousin saw, and offered to help us out! My uncle is a handyman and has done several other things for us. He is coming tomorrow to give us an estimate for demoing the porch and subsequent grading and landscaping work. I would love it if this worked out, because he is willing to let us be more hands-on with the project and teach us. We are willing to do work, but lack know-how, so we feel that we have to hire a professional.
Tomorrow I am going to City Hall to inquire about building permits and all that jazz. We also have another company coming tomorrow to give us an estimate. They deal with not only water problems but also foundation issues, so we’ll see what they have to say! I am excited about moving forward with these projects. Of course we’ll be broke after it’s all said and done, but it will be two very big things taken care of.
