Our Summer Project finally a light at the end of the tunnel..

This is the beggining of our venture

Building the retaining wall and flower beds from my May post...as you can see dirt cement and a old fence we what we faced .. as I dug for the flower beds there was more cement used as fill to build up the ground..?

here we have a view up the driveway that slopped to the house ..well you can now imagine the dry oh not dry but wet summer we faced well the rain poured down the cement to the low spot .. as you know the spot was of course at the wall to the basement of the house so rain equalled wet basement...

So my goal for the summer was to get the cement driveway emoved and get a yard that was not all dirt.. dirt rain and dog equal mud dog....

Well the flower beds went in back in May .. flowers bloomed June so the yard had some appeal.. but allas the cement was still there ...we tried to get people to move it well they were all busy or too busy for us .. I felt it was going to be a long wet muddy summer and then fall as this cenent I dug from the flower beds was enough of a load on our flat deck how could we remove a whole driveway... oh my aching back.. and Ed's tooo.....I thought you would like to see what I was dealing with a driveway that led to the house..covenient yes but not attractive..

A sneak peak at the new yard yes I think it is wonderful.. oh I did put in a little cement well they are paving stones not really the same to me and lighter than cement for sure.. While our quest to find a cement mover seemed dim well I decide it was time to give the place a fresh look... Red.. actually brick dust.. and it gave Lindsey something to do this summer..

well I think it looks like new ....

Here is a veiw of the house before... they call it mellow yellow ahh hah ...

They came they came ... we found a guy to move the cement and he actually showed up

I do not think I could have ever done this by hand...

Those are the small ones LOL....

Our driveway.... on the back yard good bye cement..

He had a couple of truck loads and it was gone... whew!!!!!!!!!

There was three layers of cement in the corner of the house ...

Now we had more dirt but thats ok dirt will soak up water right..

Ed on his tractor like a happy farmer...

This was the driveway...

Backfilling to raise the dirt by the house and make the water shed away from the basement..

Lowering the yard slope.. we both got to take our turns on the tractor it's just I am behind the camera right now...

Oh That was a quick paint job huh... I wanted to get it painted befor we built the new deck.. the lower part was fun ...NOT ... shakes and the top was high up .. none of us like height..so we then started the deck and spent time lowering the yard....

Well the yard got lowered .. well low enough for me anyhow and the day finally came .. the SOD is here we have grass..

My cousin Jason came to help lay the sod we went out to the sod farm that morning and it took them four minutes to cut all our sod ...

Lindsey is happy to have grass and it needed watering ... but we were lucky it rained the next two days so the sod really took.. well..

Our new back yard with New Sod a new sidewalk a Pergola over the deck we built last weekend

So now the back yard is almost done excet a couple flower beds...

So now we can relax right....

What will we do next... well actually we put in two new doors this weekend ..so the work never really ends next to finish painting the house and the inside will be getting stuff done this winter... till next time....Oh we are off to Disney world soon...WooHoo.....