How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Just about the time you all probably thought that I had completely given up on the idea of ever adding new content here, suddenly a new post arrives in your inbox or feedreader or whatever method you're using to see new updates. To really keep you guessing, this post is a bit different from the others that you've seen. It's not about Kyle or the new baby (well, maybe indirectly it could be).

With much thanks to Billie (Joelle's mom) and Bob (Joelle's dad) and most of all to Al (Billie's beau), we managed to get a large portion of work done on a backyard project. I wish, in retrospect, that I had thought to capture more pictures along the way. Unfortunately, the pictures posted here were the first ones we ended up taking, so you don't quite get the whole effect of the before/after and t he process throughout.

Before we get to all that, I should start at the beginning. Joelle and I had been talking about making the backyard a bit more "kid friendly" and get rid of all the rock and gravel and put down some grass so Kyle and the new baby have a place to play out back. Plus, with grass back there, we might actually spend more time out there ourselves, which will likely motivate us to make other improvements back there.

So, it all started Saturday morning when I went over to Home Depot to get some help moving the rock out of the area that the grass would be put in. If you've never hired day-laborers before, this was a very interesting experience. I highly recommend that everyone have this experience at least once in their lives.

When I was first pulling into the Home Depot, I probably saw about 7 or 8 guys out there waiting for someone to hire them. I pulled in, parked in the Del Taco parking lot and, the moment it became obvious that I wasn't going to get food and was instead walking toward the guys, within seconds I was surrounded by about two dozen guys speaking varying degrees of Spanglish.

Of course, I tried to be "fair" by choosing the first four guys that got to me, though I quickly lost track of which four they were, exactly. Before I knew it, there were a bunch of guys standing at every door of my car waiting for me to unlock it and they'd jump on in. As soon as I said that they need their own transportation, one guy waved a buddy over in his car and, behind me, four guys jumped into a little white Chevy Cavalier faster than you could say "andale." (For those who aren't surrounded by by Spanish on a regular basis, that means "hurry up.")

Off we went, with them following me back to the house where I explained what needed to be done. Then we negotiated pricing for a bit. I quickly realized that if I paid them an hourly rate, they would milk it for as long as they could. So, we finally settled on a price for the whole job. It was still a learning experience because the time they said it would take them to do the job was drastically overstated. When I tried to get some other stuff done, they would adamantly tell me that they would not do anything other than moving the gravel. So, I made sure a lot of gravel got moved.

With that done, Al started clearing out access to the solenoids for the sprinklers and I was helping with that while Bob and Billie measured out the proposed sprinkler coverage using Home Depot flags in the ground, 10 ft of string and a shovel to draw arcs in the dirt. That way, we could be fairly certain that we'd have good water coverage and no dry spots.

Next, we had to head back to Home Depot to rent the trencher. Once we got that back, the trenching went pretty well, though we did manage to find a number of sizeable rocks (see picture below). While I was trenching, Al was doing the plumbing and setting up the sprinkler heads. He let me do the last couple just to make sure I got a chance to gain some of that experience, too.

When it was all done and everything was in place, we called it a day, enjoyed a couple of Corona's, ordered some pizza and made sure to take some ibuprofen before the soreness started. Then, we could pick up where we left off the next day.

That will be the subject of another post. For now, enjoy the pictures!

The solenoids are in the upper left of this picture and you can see the initial trenches for the first three sprinklers.

Here we have the rest of that zone. You can just barely see the PVC going from the 45 degree joint on the right over to a corner sprinkler.

These aren't the biggest roots we had to deal with, but just to give you an idea...

Here's another angle showing the beginning of zone 2.

Here are the new lines coming out of the solenoids.

These are some of the rocks that we "found" while trenching. Perhaps we could break them up and sell them as gravel to fill several other yards. Some of these rocks are huge! It was LOTS of fun getting them out of the ground.