The Ordinary Mystic - Home Improvement

After we made the decision to wait until some major ground work was completed on the backyard before finishing the front-yard landscaping, it felt like it was going to be a long long time before we would be able to make any progress. But things have a way of happening on their own. A number of things.

To prepare for work in the front

Our next-door neighbor had recently put in a new lawn and we had told him that we would put in the same type of lawn - eventually. But since our old lawn started to get weed invested and threatened to spread to the neighbor’s, he offered to kill our lawn for us. And within a couple of days, there he was, spreading the lawn killer.

About the same time that happened, another neighbor talked to my wife and told her that we really don’t need to do major work on the backyard first. Depending on how we landscape the front, we could just lay plywood down for the bobcat to drive over. That would save the lawn from getting torn up in the process. Hmmmmm …

To make a dent in the back

And within a week of all this, a contractor we had used for other work let us know that a couple of landscape workers he knew were looking for work. We didn’t think we were ready, but yet we couldn’t pass up this opportunity, so we hired them for a few hours this weekend to help move a shed, tear apart an old hot tub, and remove some shrubs from the backyard and also from the front. The shed and the hot tub were two huge obstacles that we thought we would never get to. And now they are both handled.

They did such a good job that we hired them to do more work the following weekend. So, between the two weekends, these guys

• Repositioned the shed
• Removed the old hot-tub
• Removed some useless shrubs from the front yard and backyard
• Removed ALL debris that had accumulated over the year from the backyard
• Tore up the lawn in the front yard and removed it

Oh, and by “remove”, I mean that they put everything on our curb just in time for the city’s spring clean-up day - what a pile that turned out to be.

View from our porch of the debris

Looking at the huge pile, my wife and I told each other that there was no way the two of us would have accompished that much. It was very satisfying to see it and also to see how clear both yards look. The next step now is our work - to develop a layout plan for the yards. Oh, and another neighbor recently recommended a landscape architect, just in time.

[This is part of a series about our landscaping projects.]

So does it count when you are trying to manifest something for the family, and someone else in the family pretty much gets it done? Could my intentions have anything to do with it?

The landscape contractor provided a bid for the paver stone driveway which we thought was kind of high. We felt we needed to get a couple of other bids, maybe looking at other similar driveways in the neighborhood and asking the homeowner who their contractor was and if they were happy with them. Of course, that is the prudent thing to do. The problem is that we don’t always do the most prudent thing, and such was the case this time.

The contractor wasn’t able to start work for several weeks, so then was the ideal time to contact other contractors and get other bids. However, things got really busy for us and we just couldn’t find the time. Still, we were aware that nothing was being done on the driveway and we started to get a little anxious - maybe even a little eager - for something to happen. So when Alfonso called our home to let us know that he would be able to start if we were ready to go - my wife told him yes, we’re ready!

After that, things happened very fast. I came home the next day to meet with him, only to find that he arrived early, had already taken measurements, and had already received instructions from my wife. The work began a few days later.

This was our driveway before the work began.

This is our front yard with the driveway removed. The demo took about a day.

And this is the completed paver stone driveway and walkway. This took a few days.

Putting on the Brakes

The contractor was eager for more work and offered to bid on other jobs he could see needed to be done, such as tiling the porch. Other plans on the horizon include a complete overhaul of the backyard and completing the landscaping of the frontyard. He suggested that we wait on the frontyard until after the major work on the backyard was completed. That way the front wouldn’t get torn up by the digging equipment he would need to use for the back. That made sense, but then we felt pressured to start working on the back right away.

Since we weren’t ready for such a large undertaking, and there were other projects inside the house that needed more urgent attention, we opted to put a hold on any more outside work - for now. So the vision of a completed front yard is yet to be realized.

Reflections

The contractor did not lay out the walkway according to my design. The interesting part is that I had a hard time visualizing exactly how I wanted it to look, and could only muster a vague image of where it was supposed to be. And so it ended up “vaguely” how I pictured it, but it actually turned out better, more attractive, and more practical than what I had originally planned.

I think that I’m going to have to relegate myself to the role of assistant creator when it comes to the home remodeling projects. Yes, there have been some areas where I’ve played a strong role - such as installing and configuring the network and video cabling - but other than that, it is my wife who is the home dreamer and master creator. Then again, I have to ask myself, was it just that my intentions manifested themselves in ways that I didn’t expect?

Technical Stuff

We used Calstone concrete pavers, brown-charcoal cobblestone, two sizes, set in a random pattern.

Several weeks went by before the next step happened in our front yard project - meeting with a contractor who handles driveway and walkway construction. How would that go?

When I finally reached the contractor who worked on my neighbor’s yard, we arranged for him to come to my house to discuss the job. We had scheduled the meeting for 4:30 in the afternoon, but then I found out later that my wife wouldn’t be there because of a school meeting, so she wouldn’t be able to talk to him herself. Since she has specific ideas about some of the details, she was a little uneasy about not being there.

And frankly, I don’t blame her. I’m not always good about thinking of all the questions to ask, and have not had nearly the experience she’s had dealing with contractors.  

So on the day of the meeting, I left work at 4 and right away got a phone call from home. It was my wife, saying that the guy is already there (he intended to give me a window of 4-4:30 when he would be there). So by the time I get there (just ten minutes later) she had already talked to him about the job and he had taken some measurements of the yard. We talked a little longer about styles of paver stones, the pros and cons of concrete versus paver stones, and how he handles jobs in wet weather.

While discussing the driveway, he noticed our unfinished porch and offered to prepare a quote to include our plans to tile it with slate. Cool!

After he left, my wife felt better that - because he arrived earlier than expected - she was able to talk to him and ask her own questions. The meeting went smoothly, and I was glad myself that she was there to cover whatever I would have overlooked. Now we are waiting to receive the quotes.

[This series chronicles our front yard landscaping project, and the effect that conscious creation has on its progress.]

This series of posts chronicles my progress in landscaping the front yard. You’re probably wondering what a post on landscaping has to do with the theme of this website. Well, we just completed a fairly major remodel of the house itself - basically a testament to my wife’s intention and creativity. We both consider the home remodel to be an example of embarking on a venture without really knowing how we were going to accomplish it. We didn’t have a detailed plan and neither of us had any serious experience in that area. But my wife was able to find some very good contractors and, though there were some hiccups along the way, progress was made and after a little over a year the major portion of the remodeling is completed.

So now we need to give the front yard some attention, and I’ve accepted that as my own charge. I have much less enthusiasm for this type of work that my wife does, which adds to the challenge. No, I’m not planning on manually doing the landscape myself - at least not all of it - but just directing the contractors and making sure things keep moving will be time-consuming enough. Did I mention that I have little passion for this? Anyway, passion or not, my intention is to create a front yard that my wife (and, yeah, myself) will enjoy. And I truly believe that anything that is accomplished will be by the grace of God, or, through the law of attraction, whichever term you prefer.

What we’ve done so far is develop a general layout plan. We want to tear up the concrete driveway and replace it with a paver-stone driveway. We also want to use paver stones to create a walkway from the front porch to the sidewalk. I’ve been trying unsuccessfuly for about a week to contact the guy who did my neighbor’s driveway (we like the work he did). Haven’t tried contacting anyone else.

In keeping with the practice of conscious creation, I’ve been spending a few minutes each day conjuring up the feeling of the yard being completed … how it feels to be walking on the walkway … viewing the plants neatly arranged and trimmed … the new lawn fresh and green. This will be the first time I’ve “consciously” made such an intention, so we’ll see what manifests in the weeks and months ahead.

Hi! I decided to create a separate blog for any home-improvement topics, such as these current posts on the front yard landscaping.