Yard Demo, Part II.

When we left off yesterday, I was all PANIC FACE in my fried chicken shirt at our yard being a hot, hot mess.  As a reminder, this is what I came home to in the front yard:

Which was nothing compared to what I came home to in the backyard:

It’s a mud pit.  I should have squeezed into a bikini & called MTV.

Then Hicks called because they found a rather irritating intrusion into our yard, aka the folks behind us dumping their gutters & drainage into our yard.  We already knew of one neighbor doing it, now there were two, & we were pretty Momma Bear & Poppa Bear pissed that our yard had been disrespected for so long (probably because the investor was never around).

It looks like elephant turd.  Needless to say, this was my reaction:

The owner of Hicks called & he was like, “Look. We can stop work & you can fight the neighbor & the HOA or it’s less than $100 to just extend their pipe into yours.”  Part of me wanted to put my dukes up, but I also realized that in the grand scheme, it was a tiny slice of the pie.  So we approved the extension of the neighbor’s drainage & it’s fixed.  It was done so long ago, way before we moved in, that it feels a little ridiculous for us to throw a dog into the fight. & we keep reminding ourselves that they just put their house on the market for 80K more than we paid for ours & we knew that part of getting this house so cheap was shit like this that needed to be fixed.  So for now, we’re gritting our teeth & thanking them for bumping up the neighborhood value.

But if any neighbors try to dump their drainage into our yard ever again, we will have words.

& of course I remembered the wise words of John & Sherry, never judge a project by the middle.  Because it’s going to look cray no matter how you squint your eyes & tilt your head.  On Saturday morning, I woke up to this:

Seeded & hay spread, covering up the muck.  Seriously?  This is the same yard?

No freaking way.  Hicks said that we will have the most gorgeous grass, thanks to them hauling out 3 dump trucks worth of over-soaked mud & bringing in a ton of fresh, dry, fertile dirt.  Plus 6 tons of gravel to weigh down the pipes.  & with all that leftover dampness to soak up, the grass should come in fast & lush.

I walked out tentatively on it.  & I didn’t sink into the ground.  Then the big test came when we let Tuck out & she ran all over the place. I held my breath when I opened the door for her to come into the house….& not a speck of mud on her paws.  God save the Queen & my carpet!

 Final product soon!