It was a wild week, but 9 days was all it took to polish off the front yard. We had taken a break after finishing the back yard to recover and also because Tim was re-siding his house. Here’s a rough breakdown of the front yard project:
- Dad and I started on Friday the 19th by digging a trench under the sidewalk. We picked up the tractor, truck and trailer. Then we used the tractor to fill up the trailer, make a run to dump it, and then scraped off some more sod.
- On Saturday, Don, Logan and Tim joined in and we made huge progress. The trailer made non-stop runs all day long getting rid of the sod and the dirt that was being scraped off with the tractor. While that was happening, three dump trucks arrived with the new dirt that was replacing the old dirt.
- By the end of Sunday, all of the old dirt was gone and the new dirt was pretty much in place. We also rented a trencher and in just two hours, we had trenches for irrigation. It might seem silly to trench through new dirt, but we still had a couple more inches to go under the new dirt and it was almost like digging in concrete.
- Tim and I spent Monday through Thursday evenings out in the yard plumbing for irrigation. It was a wet, soggy mess as we got over 2 inches of rain. I bought a hand pump to help clear out the trenches but there were big sections of the yard that were just completely saturated.
- We took Friday off in hopes of letting it dry out just a little more. All I did was pick up a few more yards of dirt and left it sitting in the trailer for later.
- Saturday we started by spreading the remaining dirt to really level everything out. 2600 square feet of sod was delivered, and, with the help of two guys Tim knows, we had it almost all in by 2pm. We returned the tractor, spread one more truck load of dirt, finished off the sod, and then tested out the irrigation.
- I spent Sunday by myself cleaning up the yard, washing the truck, returning tools, etc.
It’s incredible how much work got done in such a short amount of time. Here are some stats:
- The front yard added up to 117 hours of labor (compared to 310 in the back yard.)
- Each load from our house to the spot where we dumped the sod took about 75 minutes round trip
- 14 trips with the dump trailer to remove the old sod, and there was 3-4 yards in each load
- 53 yards of beautiful new “supreme mix” dirt added, including three 15-yard deliveries via dump truck
- 500 miles on Don’s truck for this project
- 10.6mpg average for the truck while we were making the runs to dump the old sod
- 3.4 gallons of diesel used in the tractor over the many many hours that it was running
Because our scheduled was so compressed, I didn’t stop to take as many photos or do fancy timelapse videos. Thankfully Tyla and Mom snapped a bunch of photos and one of my security cameras caught some of the action.
THANK YOU once again to all of the friends and family that helped out! We had exactly the right amount of help to get this done. And a huge special thank you to Tim. Without you, this project would never have been attempted. We couldn’t have afforded to pay a contractor to do this, and I don’t know nearly enough to attempt something like this on my own. I loved learning about all this stuff and it was awesome to spend so much time out in the yard working with you. Thanks for putting up with all of my questions, my stress, and my mistakes!
The Seahawks were on a bye this week. Now they have 13 straight weeks to make their run at back to back Super Bowls. I actually didn’t get to watch any games this weekend, but I did peek in at our league a couple times. The big story in our league is Tim’s continued undefeated domination. Dad is having a pretty strong season and gets the next crack at Tim in Week 5.
For quite a few years, NASCAR has had internet subscription models for watching and listening to the races. But now, for the first time, NASCAR surprised me by offering all of the remaining races this season for free on YouTube (after the race is over.) That’s an especially cool deal for me since some of these races are on ESPN which I don’t pay for anymore. You can check out the 
I’m continually amazed by people merging in front of big trucks and semis, especially as traffic is coming to a stop. I see it every day. Why do you think the truck is leaving that space? It’s so they don’t kill the people in front of them. I wonder if it would help to add a “big rig ride along” day as part of driver’s ed. Students would go ride with a professional driver for an hour or so. Drivers would learn a lot about how long it takes to stop a truck and what cars do that is dangerous around trucks. There are likely a lot of legal and liability issues with that idea, but if implemented correctly, it might improve our overall safety.
The rematch of last year’s Super Bowl proved to be quite a bit more exciting and suspenseful than the Super Bowl itself. Peyton Manning drove the Broncos down the field for a touch down and two point conversion to tie up the game with seconds remaining, but then Russell Wilson matched him and led the Seahawks to a game winning OT TD. Oh and by the way, Peyton Manning is making more than 22 times as much money as Russell Wilson this year.
You can never have too many outlets in your shop. I finally got fed up with running extension cords all over the place so while Dad was visiting, we got our electrician on. Three new outlets were added inside: one near the bottom of my shelves to power the air compressor and the battery tender for the motorcycle, one by the irrigation clock, one up in the rafters by the IR light and the security camera. We also added two more outside that are on the same timer circuit as my outdoor lights: one is near the ground and one is up under the eaves. Why do that? For Christmas lights of course! I’ll have easy places to plug them in and then I’ll be able to control them with our
I-405 Project
I had thought that after the change, we wouldn’t be able to get onto 522 from 160th St anymore but it looks like they have accounted for that in the design. That’s great for us because it means we’ll be able to head out that way without driving through the traffic mess in Woodinville.
The people who bought those townhomes right along the new braided exit ramps are going to be treated to an enormous sound blocking wall right outside their balconies. They’re going from having a view that had about 3 or 4 rows of trees between them and 405 to seeing a concrete wall 10-20 feet away. Ouch. At least the real estate market is starting to recover around here so some of the decrease will be masked.
And since I mentioned real estate, here’s a semi-related factoid: the guy who bought our condo from us sold it a few months ago. He sold it for about 20% more than he bought it so he made a little money after all the fees and taxes. Our house has gone up about 3-4 times as much as that condo did though so I still think it was a good financial move. (And it was a great move for many other reasons.)