The Browns VS The Yard

So when we bought our old house 4 years ago we had to do all the landscaping, which we did. It wasn't easy, fun, or cheap! So afterwards Ben promised me that if we ever moved (because he told me that we were going to be in the last house for at least 10 years, and we weren't even in it 4) and the landscaping had to be done that we were going to pay to have it ALL done. Well he lied! This is a picture of what we had to deal with. The dirt was pushed back the legal amount from the house and we had to do the rest. We were told we would need a 7 foot retaining wall! If my kids were to fall off of that they would seriously injure themselves. We weren't told about our landscaping issues until the house was well underway so all we could do was deal with it!


In March my brother Todd came down with a semi hauling a loader to move dirt around to see what he could do for us. Thank heavens for Todd and that he loves my kids. He wasn't happy with the landscaping issue and knew that it wasn't kid friendly. He spent two days leveling and moving dirt and when he was done we only had to have a 3 foot retaining wall! He saved us a ton of money and I'm sure several trips to the ER.


So since we moved in, at the begining of May, we have been dealing with a LOT of dirt! We have worked with landscape people designing plans for sprinkler systems, curbing, fences, top soil, sod, and everything else that goes with a yard. For Memorial day we had some of Ben's family here helping to install the sprinkler system, which we later learned had been designed wrong! The guy had measured the yard wrong which totally screwed up everything! He admitted he had done it wrong, but said he didn't have time to fix it and we were basically on our own!


Ben worked on the yard constanly! We had a ton of help from our neighbors, especially Tyler. Tyler helped Ben in our yard every night even nights when Ben worked late Tyler came over and worked with out Ben even being here! We really appreciate Tyler paying a landscape company to do ALL of his yard so he could help us with ours!


So two weekends ago we were finally to the point of laying sod! Yea for us! So we called all of our family and anyone who was silly enough to say that they would help us. Ben had his older brother Daniel here with two of his boys, his brother Jacob, sister Suzy, and his sister Kat, to watch our girls. Ben learned from Tyler's landscape guy that we would need to install a pump to boost our water pressue that would cost us over $1000! So we bought one here and had Jacob install it and saved us a ton of money. Thanks Jacob. Jacob also worked on the sprinklers to make sure that all the grass would get water and so by the time we were done he was soaking wet!


I called my nephew Jason, who offered to help. He ended up coming from Sandy with my sister Wendy, her husband, Jason's wife, my nephew Logan, and my neice Lexie, who also helped watch the girls. It was a party! We laid over 13 thousand square feet of sod and were done before noon. We were a little short so we ordered some more and finished the sod last week.

A huge thank you to everyone! We couldn't have done it with out all of your help. I thought the sod would take us all day. Thanks again it took almost 3 months but we finally won the war against the yard!