May 5th… I was puttering around my yard when the neighbor’s came out for a chat. It was Cinco de Mayo and Tacos y Camaron (shrimp tacos) were on my menu, I invited them to join us.
Men may not talk as much as women, but these two managed to hatch a plan over dinner… rebuild their retaining walls! Rick happened to know Menard’s was running brick on sale which actually saved lots of money so next thing we know, our drive became clogged with pallets of brick! Shortly after, Kevin decided this might be a good time to replace the old waterline to our house since it was vintage 1920′s and we had lousy water pressure.
As it turns out… there is a lot of work involved in all this… for everyone involved! Here is the story… the captions under each tell it.
Rick’s wall was decidedly less complicated, but you get the picture of their great idea!
Suddenly our driveway was populated with pallets and pallets of brick
… and a new vehicle
Our wall was in bad shape
… and the curb nearly a foot or so made backing our of our driveway a challenge
Up at 6am moving plants. I couldn’t believe how heavy some of them were!
Mr. Bobcat, tear down that wall!
So it went…
Into the dump truck. They hauled 3 loads of concrete away.
And the wall is gone!
Donuts for the crew
Our front porch steps….
…weren’t spared (yay! a new porch!)
Disconnecting the 1920′s waterline from the street shut-off proved to be too much. It broke.
And so it went… waiting for City Waterworks to show up.
I didn’t get pictures of the city waterworks crew. They were there for nearly 3 hours replacing the broken port to our house.
They also uncovered an ancient gas line no longer in use.
A trench up into the middle of the front yard (sigh… poor tree roots)
A growing mountain of dirt…
And a crater…
And a 4-5 hour job turned into a 36-hour nightmare for the plumber.
The crew left at 7pm that night when they finally achieved success pulling the old pipe out of the house.
The next morning they brought in the big guns! This is the machine they probably wished they had started with!
Finally the pipe emerged in a new hole they drilled a couple feet over from the old one.
The connector they used to pull the pipe through with the bobcat
Through the trench…
… to the street.
All buttoned up… sorta
Now the hard work for Kevin begins!
your phone description didn’t begin to give me a sense of the overwhelming! whoa. whoa. wow. have fun kevin!
Oh…he is! I think he had an idea of how much work this involved… I’m the one that didn’t!
I was so happy to be the donut girl!
This is one of those, “It’s gotta look worse before it can look better” situations. Wow! good luck with the next stage!
The pictures really helped me picture it all better. I LOVE the trees in your neighborhood. Somehow I had you pictured living in a desert area!! I feel much better about Iowa now!
Is that a screened in front porch you have? I’ve always wanted one of those. Do you use it? What have you done with that area?
Oh my… and I thought the kitchen floor tile job was a headache. That same weekend Troy planed to give me a mothers day present of laying a new tile floor in the kitchen…. Well the 4 hour hour job became a 48 hour job when we found that the underfooor was press board and tiles must go on plywood….. inch by inch stapled and glued floor was remeoved before we could even start… My reno days were to be left in the hoof… but…. i got a taste again and rememberd why we have never had a house built and why i am too old for renos… Enjoy the new landscapeing…
Yeah, this was a project a bit like that! Most of this year is going to spent just saving the plants that had to be transplanted to temporary homes. They really didn’t like being moved (some of the twice this year) so they’re showing signs of stress. Ah well. This fall I can shop the perennial sales at my local nursery and re-landscape.
I want to see the finished wall and front step after all that work and sweat!
please?
I can post some pictures of what it looks like. We haven’t had a chance to paint the steps and will probably wait until next year to do that since it’s not too warm during the day and leaves blowing everywhere. Give me a couple days and I’ll get some up.