Building a Backyard!

One of our big projects in the new house this summer was the backyard. When we moved in it was just weeds about as high as the fence. We had a family of cats hiding out in the weeds and once we lost Nathan for a few days out there!

I mowed down the weeds and borrowed my parent's tiller with the plan of tilling everything up and cleaning it out...

After about 2 hours of trying with all my might to get that tiller to dig into the rock solid clay ground I gave up and hired a guys with a backhoe to come in and clear the ground. After we covered the whole yard in plastic and let the sun cook the weeds for about 6 weeks.

I was surprised to see how well it worked; they call it Solarization and it killed off just about everything. After the Solarization I spent a week trenching and putting in sprinklers.

After the sprinklers came the top soil and the railroad ties...

I have to admit that through it all Jamie and Nathan helped out a lot... well Nathan mostly made holes where we didn't need them and filled in the ones we did.

It took us a few days to make the mountain on the driveway to mole hills in the back yard but we did it.

After leveling the playing field we had the Curbman put in the curbing and the we ordered the sod.

The kids got to watch the sod get delivered while, we got to lay it all down.

So far it is turning out very nicely. We had a few people from the word come by to help us and it went pretty quick. Thanks everyone!

I measured and ordered the sod all by myself and this was all that we had left. A pretty good job if I do say so myself! As you can see I was pretty proud; but that is just because I am good!

Other projects to follow are trees and a swing set with a big sandbox and lots of bushes and flowers and lets not forget the garden... I guess you could say we still have a bit of work to do but it is coming alone pretty well.