We’ve been working on the yard for a while.

Back in ’02, we had a pretty plain yard that sloped down from the street to the house. It was a pretty good slope and I hated mowing it, so we decided to install a retaining wall and terrace it.

Oh man… did I have bad timing.

Right after we started the project, my back gave out. I spent the next 3 years having surgeries and the yard just sat there… a giant mud pit covered with weeds.

This year though, I’m feeling better and we’ve started up on it again. Here’s a photo show of what we’ve done so far (click the thumbnail to open the images in a popup window… click them again to make the popup go away).

Mouse over the thumbnails to read a description.

2002 – 2003

We don’t have any pictures of the next step, putting in the foundation for the retaining wall and the isntalation of the retaining wall itself, which happend tward the end of 2003. If I did have pictures, they would simply show the yard covered in black plastic… for two years. Yeah… my neighbors loved me.

I do, however, have a few pics for your viewing pleasure of where we’re currently at in 2005. We purchased some Iron Mountain pavers and 3 tons of brick to create a path (along the drive way) and a patio (in the lower part of the yard). Hopefully it looks good when it’s done.

The brick came on the 3 pallets shown on top of the pile in the garage. My wife and I decided on Saturday to get them in the garage before the neighborhood hoodlums decided to grab a few of them and insert them into the neighborhood cars via the windshields. We took 2 bricks from each pallet and started making a stack (to mix the various pallets and therefore keep the color consistent).

I helped for about an hour until my back got angry at me. My wife kept going for the next two hours. Then I came back out and we finished it. Good times!

Of couse, there’s still a ton left to do. We need to dig about 5 inches down where we plan on placing the brick (a path along side the driveway and the whole lower yard will be a patio). Then we fill it with 4 inches of gravel (compacted) and 1 inch of sand. Then we can finally palce the brick.

We hope to be done with this little project sometime before July of 2042.