I broke ground July 2nd I think.
Plenty of supervisors on-site
Like War of the Worlds, little did I know, I was already defeated. I spent the next serval days in bed with the flu or something.
4th of July. Everything I could to get out of bed and shoot off a few fireworks. Note I'm bundled up pretty good.
Back from the dead. The Robbins have been loving me. Several of them were there getting worms everytime I walked away.
What was supposed to be temporary storage, has turned semi permanent. The kids love their new "castle". Even picked up a free slide for it on the side of the road!
Finally done removing sod.
Blackberry season! These are the real deal that only we PNW natives know about.
Need I say more?
Crap it's September, rain in the forcast. Time to finish this up. Where did summer go?
This was my first attempt at this type of work. I regraded the area by hand to slope away from the house. The idea would be to match the slope of the concrete that I'd like to pour next to the garage someday.
Stanwood clay. This stuff is seriously nasty when wet, Hard as rock when dry.
Picked up this landscape fabric at costco for about $25. From what I read, this stuff is actually pretty useless, but I'm hoping it will help stop the crushed rock from disappearing to the clay when the rain comes. Ideally, I should have probably put down some larger crushed rock, but I didn't want to pay for two different loads of rock.
Lenz squeezed me in the schedule at the last minute. 5 yards of 5/8 minus. $200.
Work and anti-work
For edging, I found these concrete blocks were actually cheaper per foot than the plastic crap. Lowes price matched Home Depot and I got them for about .95 cents each. 65 blocks or so.
They look great now. I'm not sure what's going to happen this winter. I tried to compact the clay as I was putting them down. I was trying to cut cost by avoiding renting a compactor and buying sand for a base. Live and learn.
All done, just in time for the rain that hit today. Hopefully drainage won't be an issue. I tried to plan for it. I didn't compact the rock. We'll see how it goes. Really wish I could have done concrete. Maybe someday. Have lots of parking space now!
Ironically, on the same morning I had my gravel delivered, my neighbors had an excavator and dump truck at their place. My RV parking area took me all summer to finish, the neighbors RV parking was done in an afternoon.
