...and that amounts to about 2,400 strips of sod we laid this weekend. SUCH. HARD. WORK!!!
It's also very rewarding, and it makes me happy beyond words to see the kids running and playing on grass instead of packed dirt (that then comes into the house!) Our yard was embarrassing - we felt like the rif raf in our community! We haven't met everyone in the neighborhood yet, so we refer to each house by a nickname or a reference point and I'm afraid to think of what others might nickname our house based on the yard!
We've had major drama and disappointment (after disappointment after disappointment) ongoing with the landscape company our builder usually works with. They win the award for the most stupid mistakes in the entire project. And I mean STUPID!!! Our crape myrtle were replaced 3 times because they planted the wrong type of tree, and then came back and replanted more of the same wrong trees, and then came back to replant a third time. Every time they come out they break a sprinkler or a hose. They came out 3 or 4 times because we had a flooded front yard and though we tried our best to convince them we had a problem, they insisted there was no leak. Or, if there's a leak, it's coming from inside the house and it's the plumber's problem. Well on visit 5 they simply kneel down, open the irrigation valve box and see the leak and fix it in about 3 minutes. Nearly all the plants in our front beds died while we waited for them to come out, and come back again and again and again. The leak was fixed, but the drain system and grade were still terrible and we still continued to have standing water at our foundation. We've been in the house 5 weeks now (wow!) and they still have not adequately replaced all the plants that died while sitting in the pond they created. We finally asked them to just DROP OFF the plants that need to be replaced and we'll do it ourselves in hopes of avoiding more disappointment, and that too was a fail. See, they brought some plants, but they're not the right quantity, color, or species to replace what died. In their usual fashion, they brought 3 red roses to replace the 4 pale pink roses that died. They brought dwarf purple pixies that stays 1-2' tall at maturity to replace the full size loropetalum zhou zhou fushia that gets up to 12 feet tall. You get the idea. Our grade is finally good, but the drainage is not, and the plants and sod are not complete out front.
The sod out front that didn't get torn up from the re-grading they did is in pretty good shape, but we waited weeks after moving in for them to finally finish the sod they owed us in the backyard (about 5 pallets worth). They delivered a single roll of sod and I don't think it would have been nearly enough anyway. But, sod does best when installed within 24 hours of delivery. Nobody ever showed up to install it, so it died on site waiting a couple weeks for installation. Then they took the roll away and delivered 5 pallets and showed up the very same day to install! Yay! When they laid it (and busted a few sprinkler heads and pipes), we had suspected that the sod they laid was really bad quality and that it had been spray painted blue-green because it was a completely unnatural color. Boo! Sure enough, after a heavy rain, all the color washed off and we were left with what looked like straw. DEAD GRASS! 5 pallets of spray-painted dead grass disguised as living grass!
I could go on and on. These people are ridiculous. If I made any one of these mistakes, I would fully expect to be fired from my job!
So, we could have had this same company sod our backyard for about half the price of buying sod ourselves and laying it, but they were "a few weeks out" with customers in front of us who were dying to get their hands on dead sod laid by incompetent workers, and "a few weeks" with them translates to 6 weeks minimum. You read that right. It cost us more to buy it and lay it ourselves (double!), but trust me, you get what you pay for! Originally the plan was to seed the yard which would have only cost a few hundred dollars and some sweat equity to prepare the dirt by raking etc. However, we quickly learned that in our area there's no such thing as a light rain. When it rains, it rains hard and one heavy rain would have washed away all the seed, so sod was really our only option. So we sucked it up and spent the money and time to do it ourselves. All the sod sales people, and other people associated with our builder tried to talk us out of it because of the intense labor involved and the vast space we needed to cover (about 1/3 acre of pure grass). But we saved about $4-5k in labor costs, so it was TOTALLY worth it!!
Special thanks to the best brother and sister in law ever who once promised they'd be here whenever we need them and haven't let us down yet! They limped home on Saturday and somehow mustered the strength to say "my pleasure!" when we thanked them for all their hard work.
Here's what it looked like before with the 28 pallets of sod checker-boarding our yard. :)
We're exhausted, yet gearing up for the next big job - tearing out the front landscape and replanting and properly edging and mulching the beds. I'll be sure to keep you posted!
I look forward to a post not beginning or ending with how tired I am. Some day maybe. Stay tuned!
It's also very rewarding, and it makes me happy beyond words to see the kids running and playing on grass instead of packed dirt (that then comes into the house!) Our yard was embarrassing - we felt like the rif raf in our community! We haven't met everyone in the neighborhood yet, so we refer to each house by a nickname or a reference point and I'm afraid to think of what others might nickname our house based on the yard!
We've had major drama and disappointment (after disappointment after disappointment) ongoing with the landscape company our builder usually works with. They win the award for the most stupid mistakes in the entire project. And I mean STUPID!!! Our crape myrtle were replaced 3 times because they planted the wrong type of tree, and then came back and replanted more of the same wrong trees, and then came back to replant a third time. Every time they come out they break a sprinkler or a hose. They came out 3 or 4 times because we had a flooded front yard and though we tried our best to convince them we had a problem, they insisted there was no leak. Or, if there's a leak, it's coming from inside the house and it's the plumber's problem. Well on visit 5 they simply kneel down, open the irrigation valve box and see the leak and fix it in about 3 minutes. Nearly all the plants in our front beds died while we waited for them to come out, and come back again and again and again. The leak was fixed, but the drain system and grade were still terrible and we still continued to have standing water at our foundation. We've been in the house 5 weeks now (wow!) and they still have not adequately replaced all the plants that died while sitting in the pond they created. We finally asked them to just DROP OFF the plants that need to be replaced and we'll do it ourselves in hopes of avoiding more disappointment, and that too was a fail. See, they brought some plants, but they're not the right quantity, color, or species to replace what died. In their usual fashion, they brought 3 red roses to replace the 4 pale pink roses that died. They brought dwarf purple pixies that stays 1-2' tall at maturity to replace the full size loropetalum zhou zhou fushia that gets up to 12 feet tall. You get the idea. Our grade is finally good, but the drainage is not, and the plants and sod are not complete out front.
The sod out front that didn't get torn up from the re-grading they did is in pretty good shape, but we waited weeks after moving in for them to finally finish the sod they owed us in the backyard (about 5 pallets worth). They delivered a single roll of sod and I don't think it would have been nearly enough anyway. But, sod does best when installed within 24 hours of delivery. Nobody ever showed up to install it, so it died on site waiting a couple weeks for installation. Then they took the roll away and delivered 5 pallets and showed up the very same day to install! Yay! When they laid it (and busted a few sprinkler heads and pipes), we had suspected that the sod they laid was really bad quality and that it had been spray painted blue-green because it was a completely unnatural color. Boo! Sure enough, after a heavy rain, all the color washed off and we were left with what looked like straw. DEAD GRASS! 5 pallets of spray-painted dead grass disguised as living grass!
I could go on and on. These people are ridiculous. If I made any one of these mistakes, I would fully expect to be fired from my job!
So, we could have had this same company sod our backyard for about half the price of buying sod ourselves and laying it, but they were "a few weeks out" with customers in front of us who were dying to get their hands on dead sod laid by incompetent workers, and "a few weeks" with them translates to 6 weeks minimum. You read that right. It cost us more to buy it and lay it ourselves (double!), but trust me, you get what you pay for! Originally the plan was to seed the yard which would have only cost a few hundred dollars and some sweat equity to prepare the dirt by raking etc. However, we quickly learned that in our area there's no such thing as a light rain. When it rains, it rains hard and one heavy rain would have washed away all the seed, so sod was really our only option. So we sucked it up and spent the money and time to do it ourselves. All the sod sales people, and other people associated with our builder tried to talk us out of it because of the intense labor involved and the vast space we needed to cover (about 1/3 acre of pure grass). But we saved about $4-5k in labor costs, so it was TOTALLY worth it!!
Special thanks to the best brother and sister in law ever who once promised they'd be here whenever we need them and haven't let us down yet! They limped home on Saturday and somehow mustered the strength to say "my pleasure!" when we thanked them for all their hard work.
Here's what it looked like before with the 28 pallets of sod checker-boarding our yard. :)
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| here we have one ugly backyard and one very handsome nugget |
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| here's strip number 1 going in! You can see the dead straw around the outside of the walkway and in front of mom and dad's house. |
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| and my doodle cakes posing in front of a pallet after the guys finished a few rows on Friday. |
So the sod was delivered on Friday morning by the nicest man who took great care in both placing the pallets where we'd have to haul it the fewest steps possible, and also avoiding sprinklers and pipes! Hallelujah - someone who takes a little pride in his work! Trinity Turf in Pilot Point has beautiful grass and conscientious employees if anyone in the DFW metroplex is reading this! Brent and dad got to work for about an hour before they had to break for dinner, then all 4 (6 with the kids) of us got to work again right after dinner. We put in about 3 and a half hours Friday night and made great progress to ease the burden on our plans to finish the whole yard on Saturday. By the end of the night we had finished 6 pallets. We got in a decent rhythm with one person hauling the rolls, one person raking it into submission, and one person cutting trim pieces whenever we were dealing with curves or sprinkler heads, drains etc. Two teams of 3 was obviously when we made the best progress.
Our hoss brother and sister in law showed up to work bright and early Saturday morning. After about 9 hours of work on Saturday, when we couldn't function normally anymore, we called it quits with about 6 pallets left. That was physically painful and psychologically painful because we fully intended to finish by Saturday! What was even more painful was the decision to tear out all the dead grass our landscaper was so kind to install. That doubled the work on 5 pallets worth. Luckily there were no roots, so it came up easily but we still had to haul it away, and merely bending over by Saturday night was too much to ask. :)
We were all feeling the pain this morning. But we powered through and got it done by about 4pm. The last pallet, as always, gave us the most trouble, but it's done. It's done and we have grass in our backyard like normal people!!! Now we start racking up the water bills!
So to tally, it took:
2 workers for 1 hours
4 workers for 12.5 hours
6 workers for 6 hours
Here it is! It will be glorious when it all blends and quenches its thirst. :)
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| Gussy and Brent were enjoying the view from the patio. I wish I had a photo of Brent's clothes and limbs at the end of each shift. F.I.L.T.H.Y!!! |
We're exhausted, yet gearing up for the next big job - tearing out the front landscape and replanting and properly edging and mulching the beds. I'll be sure to keep you posted!
I look forward to a post not beginning or ending with how tired I am. Some day maybe. Stay tuned!
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