Backyard Progress - Retaining Wall DONE!

That's right, you heard it here first.

(Of course - where else would you hear it?)

We (of course I mean Kidney Bean - have you 

seen how big a 6x6x8 is?  There's no way that lil 'ol me could lift

one of those babies - my arms are like noodles)...

but I digress.

The wall is complete!

And here's the proof:

I am unable to take a picture of the whole thing, but the top picture is

the right side, where you can see the wall is shorter, 

a little higher for the curved part, and then

5 boards high across the back.

In the bottom picture, you can see the rest of the wall.

It's not exactly symmetrical, but we knew it wouldn't be

when we started out, since we were going to 

continue with the areas that someone

else had tried to start something.

The green on the cut angles in the top picture

will fade with time - it's the wood preserver.

And yes, we do have several (I think 7) boards

leftover -- oops! -- so I think

we'll use them in the front yard to clean up the landscaping there a little bit.

Backyard Progress - Retaining Wall

 We (of course I mean Kidney Bean) dug a trench and filled most of it with gravel.

 Here's the view of the remaining gravel and the drainage pipe that will

be behind the retaining wall.

 We ordered 46 (!) boards from the hardware store and had them

delivered - which enabled us to see an awesome fork lift.

Three big wheels - you could tell it can do the tough stuff.

Thank you to our neighbor who saw Kidney Bean carrying the boards and came

over to help carry them all to the backyard.  It was no easy task.

They are heavy!  I can help move one, sort of.

 Here's the stack of boards at the end of that night.

And here's what it looks like today.  We have one row of boards all the way across,

with the second row almost done.  Although as I type this, Kidney Bean is still

out there finishing row two.

What a guy.

Backyard

A couple weeks ago, we asked a couple companies to come out and

give us an estimate of how much it would

cost to landscape the backyard.

The verdict?

WAY too much.

We thought if it was $3k or less, we might

be able to swing that.

But it wasn't even close - double that figure and then add some more.

So we're going to do it ourselves.

 You can't really tell in these pictures, but all that dirt is higher up than the weeds.

The back fence is about 28 inches or so higher

than the ground level where the weeds are growing.

 And here's the base of the one lonely tree back there.

It's not my favorite, but it's staying.

 Pavers that prove that someone at some point thought about

landscaping back here.

I would've thought it might have gotten a little farther along in the process, since

it's apparently in the CC&Rs that the

backyard must be landscaped within one year of purchase.

But, I guess it's true that when it's out of sight, it's out of mind - 

our house was built 6 years ago.

Here are the before shots, when Kidney Bean grabbed a hoe and 

started hacking away at some of the weeds. 

It's not a big backyard, but it sure is (was) full of weeds.

Wish us luck!

We have been enjoying it so far, and you'd better

believe that we will not be spending $8k back here to get what we want!