Help with my yardscaping plans?

[Spork]

I'm cheap when it comes to grass and like seed, early spring or fall (September) works best. Hydroseed is great if you're looking for middle ground. The yard will fill in even if the dog wears paths.

 

[mbryson]

I like the color of the shed but I'm not one for vibrant colors on a house and prefer more earth tones.

The floor and progress looks great. Hopefully the warmish weather has been allowing the contractors to keep plugging along uninterrupted.

Mike

It's better but still not ideal. Plan is to get the white trim up on the sides and eaves of the shed, paint the trim around the window and door white and see how that looks. I still need to do something with the color of the pressure treated wood (at least in my mind) and then it will be "done" on the outside. I've spent all my time building out the interior of the shed the last few hours I've been working on it. Time to refocus and finalize the exterior.

The house should look pretty cool? (at least to us) We looked at the former model home out in Sunset and really liked the gray color (pretty similar to our blue?). The model home is pictured below. Our house is pretty similar but not the same.



Right now we have the base stucco on the back and sides of the house that's in a natural concrete color. I actually like that quite a bit but the blue should arrive sometime in the future?

 

[mbryson]

Fun stuff today. Some color on the house. These guys were done by 2pm? Scaffolding removed and everything.
Turned out pretty awesome from our perspective.




This is my “house” project before I can work on my “Jeep”. Run a couple conduits under where the RV pad will be. One conduit for a potential future gate opener, the other for a yard lamp on the the same circuit as the house lights.

Been a while since I dug a trench . My 15 yr old daughter helped. Good bonding time. She grumped about digging up rocks. We’ll get the conduit in the ground and plant a piece of tube for my gate to latch to (and also protect the corner of the house).



The stone guys should cut around this box pretty nicely. They might be a little grumpy about it but who knows. After overnight thoughts, I think I’m going to make this a double gang box with 110 plugs. One side will be switched with the porch lights, the other just a convenient outlet and then each continuation will be for its intended purpose. Off to buy more junk at the hardware store...

Spent about 60 minutes trying to find my grinders in the storage shed. After that long without success, I just went and bought a new one. Hopefully tomorrow turns into Jeep fixing day. I also painted the trim on the shed. It makes a nice difference and breaks up the heavy blue pretty nicely

 

[Pile of parts]

Good call on power for a possible gate opener.

 

[BCGPER]

I’ve been waiting for a progress update because they broke ground across the street from me on this one the same week you did, so I’ve been trying to compare. Looks like your builder is kicking ass on the builders around here.

 

[mbryson]

We are possibly in on April 20-21? We just did some “final grade” work today with the flat work guys. They made another smaller rock wall to secure our deck stair landing.

We weren’t psyched with how high one of the rocks was so I levered it out of place with a shovel after digging out in front of it.



I dug a deeper hole and rolled it back into place. Didn’t go down far enough and had to do it again. At this point I had to dig a bunch of stuff out and then I couldn’t move the rock. No idea what it weighs but it wanted to break my fiberglass shovel handle.

Well, what do you do? I wondered if I could front dig and roll the rock up then I could have an assistant brace under the big rock with a smaller one?





Mission accomplished

 

[Bart]

Looks amazing Marc and hope the April deadline is met. It's nice to have a retaining wall that is Trail Tested.

 

[zmotorsports]

Looking great Marc. I'll bet you're excited beyond measure.

Mike

 

[mbryson]

Looks amazing Marc and hope the April deadline is met. It's nice to have a retaining wall that is Trail Tested.

Looking great Marc. I'll bet you're excited beyond measure.

Mike

Thanks gents!!! It is exciting. Fun time to be completing a mortgage

I'm mostly just trying to make the yard "serviceable", then focus on the garage, then come back to some yard improvements here and there. We'll see how it goes.

 

[mbryson]

Well, we are in, finally. Now the work begins on the yard in earnest. I have two zones of sprinklers installed (I still need to set the heads but all the digging is complete) and need to start work on getting some green stuff put down. I think we'll try seeding and see where that goes. I have very little investment to seed vs sod. I'd rather use the $ I'd use on sod for other things. Maybe to late to get a good start with the grass but I'll give it a shot? I'll need a tiller for some of the "fill dirt" that was brought in. Hope to kick that off tomorrow. The native dirt is awesome. A LOT of that ended up under my garage unfortunately.

 

[Pike2350]

Looks awesome.

 

[Spork]

I think you'll be fine with seed, just keep it wet for a couple weeks then start backing off as it's established, I think I had my sprinkler hitting it every 4 hours during the day for short periods when it was seed.

 

[Herzog]

The home looks great Marc! I wasn't sure about the blue at first but man it looks good now.

 

[Hickey]

I think you'll be fine with seed, just keep it wet for a couple weeks then start backing off as it's established, I think I had my sprinkler hitting it every 4 hours during the day for short periods when it was seed.

Don't be afraid to spread "Starter" fertilizer when seeding. It won't burn your seeds/sprouts. Hit it with a liquid based weed and feed as soon as the instructions on the seed bags say you can (6 weeks?).

 

[mbryson]

Anyone have a take on if a rear tune rotary tiller would be the best soil prep or if I’d be better off with a mini-excavator?

 

[Spork]

Isn't most of your ground already stirred with all the construction? I think a rear tine tiller would be plenty.

 

[mbryson]

Isn't most of your ground already stirred with all the construction? I think a rear tine tiller would be plenty.

its getting a workout

 

[Hickey]

its getting a workout

When I did my backyard I had a ton of clay on the surface that was hard like plates of concrete. I used a small tractor with a cultivator attachment to break it up. After that the tilling was much easier.

 

[kmboren]

We just layed 5600 square feet of sod. It wasn't as expensive as I thought it might be. $1600 worth. I love how it came out.

 

[Spork]

Got to admit I didn't do any prep except pick up every rock bigger than a golf ball and raked mine smooth before putting down seed. If you want to go even less prep get a aerator (plug kind) before you throw seed and it will look like a hair transplant until it fills in.