I called the landscaper and scheduled our backyard to be redone on June 3rd. Exciting!!

They’re going to:
1) Remove all the random pieces of cement.
2) Put in a catch basin where the water is pooling to collect it.
3) Put in an underground pipe that will run the water to the back of the property (where there is a stream).
4) Connect the two downspouts from the back of the house to the underground pipe.
5) Remove the cinderblock retaining wall and rebuild it with landscape timbers.
6) Grade the entire backyard and prep it for grass.

We’ll plant the grass in the fall – I think Sept. 15th is the earliest you can plant fescue grass here in Georgia. I hope we don’t see any ill effects of having it “prepped” three months before we actually do it, but we wanted to get it done now to help with the mosquitoes that are bad this time of year. (They’re going to clear out the brush from the yard, which is where the mosquitoes are hiding.)

So in the next month, we need to remove all the non-organic debris from the yard. We also need to make sure the downspouts are secured properly – we have gutter issues (will be fixed when we reroof the house – apparently there aren’t proper places to attach the gutters??? or something like that). I’m excited to get this project done!

I am not sure when we’ll do this, but I also have hopes of painting the back of the house and also the shed to match. It will be nice to have a backyard that doesn’t look so trashy!!

The space between the corner of our house and our neighbor’s house is only a few feet. Previous owners made the space seem even tighter by putting up a fence that cut in from the property line. Here’s what it looked like last summer:

It looked better after we removed the sunporch and cut back some of the bushes:

After we had our land surveyed and realized that the fence didn’t represent the true property line, I wanted to tear down the fence and rebuild it in the correct place. But, that was not a financially wise plan of action. However, I really wanted to take down at least the one part of the fence to open up our backyard a little. It’s hard to explain!

Our neighbors moved out last week and their house is now for sale. If there’s a good time to take care of any property line details, it is now. We also want to clean out the ditch between our two properties (technically on their side of the line) because it is a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Yesterday Paul took down the part of the fence that has been bugging me. The posts are still up, but overall the space looks much more open!

Our backyard looks trashy, I know. We really need to hire the landscaper we plan to hire… I think we’re hesitating because it’s such a big sum of money! Anyways, this will help them get into the backyard and make the transition space from the side to the back much easier. I’m hoping they can take out the posts for us, too.

Someday we’ll put up the fence again to completely close in our backyard. I hope to have a dog someday (after we’re done having children!) so having a fenced in yard will be important. But, we’ll see how everything else goes. Putting up a fence along the side yard to keep toddlers in and trespassers out is a bigger priority for me. :-)

I just thought I’d pop in. We decided which company we were going with, and decided to seed instead of sod, but you can’t seed fescue grass after April 15th in Georgia so we just didn’t move fast enough. (If I had realized that, I would have started these estimates sooner.)

So we have two options.
1) Have them lay all the pipes and prepare the yard for seeding now, then seed ourselves in the fall.
2) Have them do everything in the fall.

It would be nice to get it down now, because we have been having a lot of rain recently and I would love to get it taken care of. The longer we let the water sit around our house foundation, the more risks were taking. But, I’m slightly concerned about having just dirt in our backyard for the next 5 months until we can seed it. Also, our backyard is 100% weeds right now, and I’m thinking that if they prep it now, then we’ll still have to deal with weeds that crop up afterward.

I am disappointed that we didn’t get to lay seed now. I was really hoping that we would have a backyard to spend time in this summer! Oh, well. If we go ahead and do the work now, I can still put up a clothesline which is one of the things that I am anxious to do, especially to take advantage of the summer sun.

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. :-)