Spring Yard Work 2010

[buzz]

Nice work Nelson, that looks great!

-Buzz

[MemphisFred]

Really great job you & your buds did, congrats. That octagan shaped part of the deck looks suspiciously like maybe for a hot tub.

[ndv21]

Really great job you & your buds did, congrats. That octagan shaped part of the deck looks suspiciously like maybe for a hot tub.

Actually, I'm somewhat of a pyro so the octagon was built with the sole purpose of having a firepit and a few comfy chairs to sit back and enjoy a cigar over a nice fire. That way I wont have to refill my lighter .

We wanted to get the most enjoyment possible out of our deck so thats why we want to have a firepit for those "cool" texas nights. I'll post new pics once we get the outdoor furniture in place (that may happen in a couple of months).

Thanks for the comments guys.

[dr. cox]

Finally finished with the sprinkler installation. Took about 20 hours of digging spread out over two days. My back is so damn burnt. I look like a lobster so damn bad, my back is red and my front is white. Its horrible, but with that done I can move forward on my other projects.

[ilikefishes]

I broke my leg last June when our "New" deck collapsed out from under me. I fell 13', lucky to keep my leg. If not for the best doctor in the area on call that night, it would be different I feel.

That being said, it has been a long recovery and I am excited more and more every day to get out and do some work. I really enjoy the landscaping, and my wife likes what it comes out like. That is what counts, so yes, I am doing a ton this spring. I am collecting rock from local areas that will allow me to do so, and finishing some work that was started and never finished.

We live on a .28 acre lot and so therefore, the jobs are usually very large and take several weeks to complete. I like to do it right the first time, not like the previous owner.

[ilikefishes]

finally finished with the sprinkler installation. Took about 20 hours of digging spread out over two days. My back is so damn burnt. I look like a lobster so damn bad, my back is red and my front is white. Its horrible, but with that done i can move forward on my other projects.

i hate sprinklers!

[ndv21]

...snip..... I'll post new pics once we get the outdoor furniture in place (that may happen in a couple of months).

Well, I got a great deal on some patio furniture so I decided to pull the trigger. Set it up this past weekend while mowing/fertilizing the yard. I had already stained the deck the previous weekend so we were ready to go. Got to enjoy it for the first time last night while smoking a cigar and on chat.

[ashauler]

Very nice Nelson!! When's the herf?

[ndv21]

Very nice Nelson!! When's the herf?

Anytime you guys come my way, you are welcome in our house!

[D_M_S]

Nice work on the deck - looks awesome man.

My wife and I have been in our house for about a year now, time to start working on the back yard. We broke it out into3 phases (1) tiles for the outdoor living area (2) shrubs along the backside for wind block and privacy and (3) the lawn.

Phase 2 will be completed later this week. We just finished digging a 60-foot long ditch to prepare it for shrubs. Man, that was A LOT of work, a lot of digging into desert soil that is so dry it might as well be granite! My gardener is putting Xylosma along the back and that will provide great privacy for us.

Here's a picture of the ditch we dug. We have 60' along the backside, so its hard to capture it in a single shot.



Phase 1 is also underway. We know what tile we want, we just have to do the damn thing now. We're going to lay it ourselves, but it's about 500 sq feet. So, we want to make sure we have all the tools in place and what-not. I'm motivated to do that phase because it will be my new smoking area

[CptnBlues63]

Nice job on the deck ndv21. It looks great!

My wife likes a colorful and attractive yard so I've been slowly plugging away at doing stuff for her. I'm even starting to get into it myself more now than ever before.

We bought this house 3 years ago and since have put in a new deck, replaced the rotting wooden fence in the front yard, replaced the section of rotting wood fence in the back with chain link (it had the two sides in the back done with chain link, not sure why the back section was wood), and put in privacy slats in all the chain link fencing.

The following two pic's show the deck from the back of the house looking toward the front. The house is a "modular" home. Which is a fancy way of saying it was built somewhere else and shipped here in two pieces. The main floor is about 4 feet above ground level so the deck is that high and runs the entire length of the house.

The first pic shows our youngest (1.5 yr old) Yorkie, "Brutal" standing at the top of the back deck stairs.


This second picture shows our 6 yr old 'Bugg' (Boston Terrier/Pug cross) "Keyser Soze" standing in the same place. I included it cause he's kind of cute.....lol......yeah I know, I know! The wife didn't get a pic of our old guy (he's 14+) so you don't get to see him.......lol


This next one is the front yard. The fence in the front is 1 m (3 feet) high. That's the limit I can make it in front. It turns out my little monster dog, Brutal, can jump that high straight up. So to prevent him jumping the fence my wife decided we needed a two foot wide flower bed. On the inside of the flower bed is wire premade fencing bought at the hardware store. Of course, I had to buy double what I needed cause the little sh*t weighs only 11 lbs and could walk through the open spaces in the wire fencing......LOL. So I offset the second set and that slows him down. We filled the bed with hollyhocks. In a month or two they'll be 4 to 5 feet high and colorful. That'll keep the little monster in! Instead of removing the dead birch (it was dead when we bought the place) we decided to keep it and use it for hanging bird feeders and suets. We like birds and it works great for attracting them The flower bed around the dead birch is also new this year (oh my aching back!). The inner ring of that is sunflowers (giant ones) and the outer ring is gladiola's which are starting to pop up now.


This last is a view of the back from the deck stairs. I put in the flagstone style patio for the wife last summer. Instead of rock, I used patio blocks (the 2'x2' and 2" thick kind) I broke up. It's a design she saw on the web and liked. I think it looks not too bad now that the grass I planted in and around it is growing. I also added the little garden plot you see at the very back this year. We used 2"X"12" to make an 8' square and I filled it with 2 yards of topsoil. Unfortunately, where we live, I have about 6" of topsoil and then nasty hard clay that's like concrete. We've tried a garden before but it never grew well because of the lack of topsoil. I'm hoping this year it'll grow better.


This year I'm also going to be building a Pergola over the patio for my wife. Google that if you're interested, it's too hard to explain and in this case, a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Just an FYI, I'm a computer geek by trade so building things is not my forte. I paid someone else to do the deck. My good friend and hunting partner is a Civil Engineer and he's going to help me get the Pergola started. I managed to do the patio without any help and actually had fun running the packer to tamp the sand down under the blocks.....LOL. Slowly but surely I learn things as I go and I do love learning, and working with my hands, so it's all good in the end.

I was never a big fan of yard work......I'd much rather sit in the sun and smoke a cigar than work....but I like everything my wife's done so far and love the flowers and plants she's adding. I've even gotten so I'm starting to enjoy the work. But, I still prefer sitting on the deck smoking a cigar.......LOL

[nhcigarfan]

yeah that is nice.