Dirt, dirt and more dirt

After the house project had seemingly come to a close, I realized that while most of the work was done, I still had no yard.

When we bought the land for our new house we didn’t realize the ground was so low. Not a big deal, says the excavator, we just don’t dig the hole as deep and you raise the elevation of the house by 4 ½ ft. All in all it wasn’t a big deal until it came time to fill in the area surrounding the house. I’ve had 42 tandem loads of dirt weighing in at approximately 14 tons each hauled in for a grand total of 588 tons. The excavating company has done most of the heavy lifting in the rough grade process, but I told myself to save money I would do the finish grade. This includes filling in around the concrete, flowerbeds, leveling problem areas in the yard, etc… I started that process this weekend. With a borrowed tractor the job seemed to start very easy. Drive up to a pile of dirt, use the loader, dump the dirt and spread it. Not difficult. After about 7 hours of work, I decided I had done as much as I could with the tractor and the rest would have to be done by hand. On any normal day, this would be a big job, but it happened to be 95 and humid today. So after scooping for about an hour and a half, I decided the best route would be to just clean off the driveway and sidewalk. So, I’m making progress, but slow progress. I will post pictures this week.