Hiring Someone v. Doing It Ourselves: Dirt Version 2.0 (Three Days v. One Month and Counting)

Version 1.0 is in this post. Long story, short: We hired the first dirt guy on 14 July, expecting he’d get everything done within a couple weeks. We didn’t know he was doing this job after his other, 12-hour-a-day job. Excuse after excuse after excuse later, he still hadn’t finished by 16 August. The last text we got was on 11 August (Saturday afternoon) asking if we were around so he could come by. We weren’t. We haven’t heard from him since.

On 16 August, we noticed that our neighbors across the road were having some excavation work done on their property to fix the damage the floods had done to their backyard. L.M. hopped right on over there to see if perhaps we could get in on some of that action, and it turned out the excavator was one of our subdivision neighbors. We talked to him and he said we needed some major work done or our driveway would keep washing out with every big storm. Of course. We took him on a tour around the house and he said he could do it the next week for a whole lotta money. He would also put some 1″ granite on our driveway and paths so they wouldn’t wash away as easily. And another culvert so water didn’t go over the driveway.

He showed up Monday morning as agreed upon and got to work. On Wednesday afternoon, after three days of moving dirt and rock, it was finished. FINISHED. We couldn’t believe it. We wasted so much time and money on the first guy. I hate having to learn these expensive lessons.

I don’t know quite what I was expecting, but after the second day I was a little worried. To get the drainage right, he had to scrape and scrape, which left everything in front really bare. So much for keeping the natural stuff around. After they finished and the paths were in, it looked much better. I think I’ll be good with it when we get that prairie grass planted, but that won’t be until after the irrigation is in…

But in the meantime, here are the excavaton pics:

This is what I wasn’t sure about. It looks so barren. I was also not so sure about how much the road is elevated.

They started putting rock right along the drip line on the west side of the house. Thank goodness.

This is the rock they spread around. It’s got crushed granite in there.

This looked pretty good after the second day.

After the third day, it was growing on me. That pathway looks good. The rock is lighter than we wanted, so we’re hoping it kind of disappears when the grass is planted. We will eventually compact the rock in the paths as soon as we get the irriegation in. Also, do you see that we didn’t put another path going from the drive? I had it on the landscape plans, but when L.M. and I  staked out the front paths, having that other one made it look like we were going for an island, with that one lone sagebrush right in the middle. I’m not a fan of the country driveway island look, and in this case it broke up the flow way too much. The front of the lot looked like it was chopped into too many pieces. Weird, huh? I wonder what other design elements in our plan won’t work in real life.

On a completely unrelated but important note: doesn’t that hanging globe porch light look fabuloso? Totally worth all the hassle.

No more earthen dams to collect water next to the window wells.

View of the backyard from beyond the fire pit.

Here’s the patio. “Hold up,” you say. “Wasn’t this supposed to be concrete? And what’s that dirt half circle there outside the dining room sliders??” Well, we had a little change of plans. We weren’t really committed to the patio being concrete, because it would be huge and bright and glary. And bare. So I stared out the window for 137 hours, and eventually thought that maybe we could add a swoop of planter right there, and the patio part could be under the kitchen windows where you couldn’t see it that much. When I outlined it, it felt like it was a sort of garden courtyard. It would also make it possible to bring plant material right up to the edge of the sliders, which connects the house to the landscape a little better. Also, the patio wouldn’t be this monolithic thing. We went with the rock for the patio because it looks a little more natural and it could be done pronto. This design change also provides a much better place for bird feeders and a couple bird baths in that planter instead of in the Buffalo grass area.