Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Home Improvement

Irrigation Cost

As I ran the irrigation system for the first few times, I had no idea how much money it was costing me. We’re only billed every two months so it would take a while to find out and I didn’t want a big surprise. To get a rough idea, I ran each zone for a few minutes and then took a reading from the water meter. Thankfully we have very accurate water meters so I was able to get good readings.

Coupled with that effort, I also put some jars around the yard as the irrigation ran to see how much water it was putting down. The books and web sites I’ve read say that you should give your yard 1” of rain per week spread over either one or two sessions. This encourages the grass to build up a better root system than they would if you watered a little bit every day. Each zone in my system needs to be on for 30 minutes to give the grass 1” of water.

Putting all that info into a spreadsheet tells me that it costs about $4/week to water my lawn. That will probably be closer to $10 once we get the front yard done. For a huge portion of the year, it’s either cool or wet enough that I won’t need to water, but during those few hot dry weeks we get in July and August every year, it will be awesome to have a healthy green lawn.

benmartens July 30, 2014 Home Improvement

Backyard Completed!

It has been a long road and this will be a long post, but Tim and I are finally done with the back yard. I got the two gates built, installed and stained and on Saturday at noon, I declared the project done. “Done” here means that all the big pieces are completed and the yard can be locked up again. There are still plenty of smaller items like making one final dump run, adding bark chips, etc but those aren’t as urgent and I’ll just work them into my normal home improvement projects. The front yard is still a mess too, but that will sit for a couple months until Tim is available again. The front yard should be a lot smaller project too. So with all those caveats, I’m done!

When I show people photos of the finished project, it’s kind of anti-climactic. They look at the before photo and wonder why we changed anything. So let me go back and list out the reasons why we weren’t thrilled with our old back yard:

  • Any time it rained, the yard was muddy. Drainage was horrible/non-existent and water would sit in the yard for days after a heavy rain. From roughly November through May the grassy area was pretty much unusable.
  • The cedar swing was nice but it took up a big chunk of our yard. We only used it once or twice for photos because it was a giant spider web. As I started tearing it down, I also learned that it was very rotten and probably would have caused some serious injury before too much longer.
  • The fence was rotten and falling over. I had propped it up with some extra supports but those weren’t enough to hold it anymore.
  • The pine trees (arbor vitae) along the fence were getting close to the end of their life and were starting to brown. The thundercloud plum in the corner was disaster. Please don’t ever plant one of these trees.
  • Most of the bushes in the back yard were not pruned well by the previous owner and were overgrown.
  • The “retaining wall” appeared to be constructed with old concrete from the patio that was there before the new one was put in. It was about two feet high and I can’t tell you how many times it crumbled underneath me. We would have constantly been pulling Elijah back from it as he toddled around (if he could even make it there in the mud.)

So yes, on the surface it looked ok, but as we got more familiar with the yard, we knew it’s time had come. Now we have a beautiful new yard!

[UPDATE: These links are broken now, but I’ll leave the text] I made a Photosynth of the back yard in it’s current state. If you forgot what it looked like before, you can check out this previous Photosynth. Honestly I do like the way the old yard looked like it had been lived in and wasn’t brand new. This new one has so much more space though and it will grow in like the old one did (but without getting out of control!)

It should come as no surprise that I was collecting a lot of data about this project as we went. Here are some facts:

  • Major features completed: French drains, irrigation, retaining wall, and fence
  • Square feet of grass before: 475. Square feet of grass after: 1175
  • Number of retaining wall blocks: 441
  • Linear feet of fence: 152
  • Gates: 2
  • Posts: 21
  • Cedar fence panels: 332
  • Gallons of stain: 13.5
  • Nails: 2200
  • Yards of dirt added: 34
  • Home Depot Transactions: 32
  • Project calendar duration: 44 days
  • Actual days spent working: 41 days (only 3 days with no progress!)
  • Days affected by rain: 1
  • Estimated savings by doing it ourselves1: 58%
  • Total Hours spent: 310

1 This calculation was done using a standard contractor markup for materials and then assuming that professional labor would work 30% faster than we did (except for Tim.)

Here are a couple charts breaking down the cost by feature of the yard and then another one showing how much time each helper put into the yard. Thank you everyone! The cumulative hours chart shows that we kept the rapid pace up for the whole project. I don’t think we could have done it quicker without taking more vacation or hiring more help. Nearly every available hour was spent working on the yard.

And finally, here are some photos, starting with before:

During:

After:

And finally, here’s a complete list of all the timelapses I made along the way.

This is the last you’ll see of the yard updates for a couple months until we start on the front yard. Until then you’ll find me in the back yard admiring our work with meat on the grill and a beer in my hand.

Links to previous updates 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7

UPDATE: The front yard is done now too!

benmartens July 15, 2014 Home Improvement, Projects, Timelapse

Yard Project Update 7

Everything is coming together! This week is all about the finishing touches. To get started, we put down two more yards of dirt on Monday.

On Tuesday, we planed 10 emerald green arborvitae trees along the fence line. We got 7 foot trees so that they were just taller than the fence now and they’ll grow ~6” per year until they’re back up at the height we had before. The old trees that were there really helped to hide the fact that the neighbor’s house is so close. There’s a drip irrigation line running around the trees so I set up the controller to keep them well-watered while they are adjusting to our yard.

Wednesday morning we had sod delivered all the way from Oregon. It’s a mixture of fescue and rye and it looks beautiful! Tim and I laid it all down on Wednesday night. The irrigation is a huge help again here because the sod really needs a lot of watering to recover from it’s journey. On top of that, it’s supposed to be 90+ degrees for the next 7 days. Hopefully everything stays green and healthy and puts down good roots. If that all goes well, we’ll be able to use the yard in just 2-3 weeks!

There is a seemingly endless list of small things that I can keep doing on the yard, but I’m calling it “done” once I finish building the second gate, install it, and then stain both gates. At that point we’ll have a closed back yard with everything planted. Dump runs, mulching, etc can be handled much more slowly as I have time. The next update you get on this project should be the grand finale! (At least for the back yard… the front yard starts in a couple months.)

Links to previous updates 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5 and 6

benmartens July 11, 2014 Home Improvement

Yard Project Update 6

Tim and I put 2 more yards of dirt and leveled out the yard. It’s sitting for about a week to compact and get ready for sod. I got the fence stained (see the timelapse below). Don and Logan came over on Saturday to help set the remaining three fence posts. There’s one short fence that sticks out from the east side of my house with a gate on the end and then the other post was for the gate on the west side of the house. I got the short fence built, posts cut off and capped and started building the first gate.

This is an exciting week as we’ll be putting in trees along the back fence between our house and the neighbors (same basic type that were there before) and then we’re going to put down sod! The original plan had been to seed but given the small size and our desire to be DONE we are just going with sod.

I did some calculations and we in more than doubling the amount of grass we have in the back yard! The new grass area will be about 250% of what we had before.

Links to previous updates 1, 2 , 3, 4 and 5

benmartens July 8, 2014 Home Improvement, Timelapse

Yard Project Update 5

These updates are coming fast and furious now. Lots of items are getting crossed off the list which feels great! So much of the work up to this point has been digging and doing early stages of tasks.

The sod that Tim put in by the front cherry trees is looking really healthy. The irrigation was all connected so I went out morning and evening and turned the valve by hand to water that section. A few days later, we hooked up the irrigation controller so now it’s all done automatically on a timer. The back yard irrigation is done and wired too. All the nozzles are in. We tested to make sure coverage was good and it was such a joy to see the whole area get perfectly covered with water. I used to spend so much time dragging sprinklers around and trying to get it all aligned correctly!

I finished putting up the fence rails and most of the planks. There’s a timelapse of part of that work below. Then Ken and Logan came over on Saturday to help me cut the final boards and attach all the tops rails. I also got all the post tops chopped off and the caps put on. The next phase there is staining and hopefully I’ll be doing that this week. That’s a tricky proposition though because I have to be really careful about overspray. If it isn’t feasible then I’ll be hand rolling the fence which isn’t the end of the world.

A couple other smaller tasks got crossed off too. I connected the sump pump to the drainage system, installed metal flashing along the fence that borders the neighbors yard to keep their higher dirt/pine needs from coming in direct contact with the bottom ~8” of fence, and I dug out part of our old rock pathway where we will now have sod.

Remaining tasks are adding a few more pickup loads of dirt to level out the yard, planting trees, installing sod, and building the gates.

 

Links to previous updates 1, 2 , 3, and 4

benmartens July 2, 2014 Home Improvement, Timelapse

Yard Project Update 4

While it might not look that much different than a week or two ago, we’re crossing some major work items off the list. The drainage is completely done and covered up. We dug trenches for irrigation, laid the pipes, installed the heads, and filled in the trenches. All that’s left there is hooking up the controller. We even installed a bit of sod along the driveway. I think we’re going to sod the back yard instead of seeding. It’s a pretty small area so the cost isn’t huge, and it will get us a nice result sooner. Don and Logan stopped by to help me set three more fence posts along the wall.

The biggest remaining puzzle piece is the fence. I’m hitting that hard now and hope to make good progress over the weekend if the weather cooperates.

We are 227 hours into this project and doing pretty well with the budget. It’s a ton of work but it’s fun to see it start coming together. My life right now is pretty much wake up, go to work, come home, work in the yard until 9 or 10, go to bed. Tyla has been great putting in extra hours to take care of Elijah when I’d normally be helping out! We’re both eager for the project to be done so things can return to “normal” and we can enjoy the fruits of our labor. I’m able to list out the remaining work in quite a bit of detail which means that we’re getting closer to the end. At least it’s measurable with a pretty high confidence rate.

Links to previous updates 1, 2 and 3

benmartens June 27, 2014 Home Improvement

Tips For Building A Fence

I am far from an expert on fence building so after reading a bunch of articles on the web and enlisting some help, I built one wall of my fence before starting on the rest of it. This turned out to be a good decision because I could make all my mistakes on a smaller scale and then move more quickly on the rest of the fence. Here are some of the tips I picked up along the way:

  • I used 10ft pressure treated 4x4s. You can get away with shorter posts but you have to be really careful about the depth of your hole. I prefer to leave them long and then saw off the tops at the very end of the project.
  • Set the corner posts first. This allows you to string a line between them and make sure the interior posts are all perfectly aligned.
  • Once you’ve determined where your posts sit (roughly every 8 feet), dig a hole that is roughly 10” in diameter and 3 feet deep. Dig so that the post will be centered in the hole once it’s lined up with the string.
  • Put a few inches of pea gravel or clear aggregate at the bottom.
  • You’ll need two people to line up the post. Attach a cheap 8ft piece of wood to the post, pound a stake in the ground and then screw the wood to the stake while holding the post perfectly straight in that direction (use a 4ft level.) Repeat for the other direction. Do this all the way down the line.
  • Mix your concrete and pour it in being sure to push the concrete around the post and work out any bubbles. Let them dry for at least a day before continuing.
  • I bought pressure treated wood for the rails, but you can probably get away with something else if you want to save money.
  • String two lines between your corner posts at the height of each rail. The bottom rail is about a foot off the ground and the top rail is right at the top of your planks.
  • Make sure you get those rails level or you’ll have a goofy looking fence. I used a nail gun to attach the rails to the posts. I was able to do this step by myself because I screwed in a temporary board on the opposite post to hold the rail in roughly the right spot until I attached both sides.
  • Attach the planks. This is where a nail gun really comes in handy. I’m using a 15-gauge finish/trim nailer with 1-1/2-in. galvanized nails.
  • If your planks but up against trees or bushes, consider staining that side of the planks before installing them. Some sites recommend staining ALL of your boards before you install them but I’m not going that route.
  • Once everything is installed, let it sit for a week or two. The boards will dry out and shrink quite a bit. You should have installed the planks so they were tight against each other but after they dry, there will be 1/8-1/4” between them.
  • Stain! I won’t give any tips since I haven’t stained the fence yet, but my plan is to use a sprayer with a semi-transparent natural cedar color stain. I’ll have to rig up some tarps to avoid overspray in our tight quarters.
benmartens June 25, 2014 Home Improvement

Yard Project Update 3

It’s hard to see a lot of change since the last update, but we’ve been working hard! The major accomplishments last week were installing French drains, installing downspout drains and getting the first part of the irrigation in the ground. That meant a LOT of trenching and some of it was through some incredibly compacted dirt. I took the day off Wednesday and spent a good portion of the day with a pick axe breaking through it. I was sore that night! It feels great to have this all in the ground and hidden away though. Our back yard should be significantly drier now. It had previously been a swamp any time it rained, but a majority of the water that falls on my property will now be piped away. And I’m very excited to have irrigation! Given the layout of the yard and the water lines, we actually started with the parts of the yard that need irrigation the least but that’s ok. We’ll get to the rest of it.

And I should also mention that Don came over three days last week to help me set fence posts. Thank you! We put cardboard tubes in behind the wall to hold back the rock and give us a place to set the posts. Those cardboard tubes started to fail a bit in the rains so Don helped me get them set. There are only three more posts to dig and set before I can start building most of the rest of the fence.

Our neighbors have been super nice during this project, and that’s a good thing since we feel a lot closer to them with this fence removed! They even asked Tim to come take a look at their back yard when he’s done. We had another neighbor stop by and ask for Tim’s card too. He does great work and people are noticing.

The next steps will be finishing the irrigation in the other half of the back yard, filling in all the trenches, setting those posts and then building the fence. The majority of the work is behind us but there’s still plenty to do.

Update 1 and Update 2

benmartens June 24, 2014 Home Improvement

Yard Project Update 2

Tim and I worked pretty much every night last week. I got the fence along the west property line close to complete and Tim spent a lot of time getting the bottom layer of the retaining wall perfectly placed. We were hoping to have the wall done by Friday night but at 10pm that night, we called it quits and decided to finish it in the morning. Saturday morning we met at Home Depot at 6am to make sure that we could rent their walk-behind skid steer loader for the day. It was a critical piece of the puzzle. We finished the retaining wall by about 9am and then backfilled the wall with a drain and gravel. Andy and Logan stopped by to help out too. They started by digging a couple postholes and then started the French drain and irrigation trenches. It was really difficult digging. Thank you! We had another 15 yards of dirt delivered. It would have taken forever to drive each load up into the yard so we set up a relay instead. Tim used the machine to fill wheelbarrows. The other three of us took turns with the two wheelbarrows running loads up into the back yard. Moving 15 yards of dirt one wheelbarrow at a time sure takes a while but I was incredibly thankful to have the machine, someone who knew how to operate it, and lots of people to run the wheelbarrows. We called it quits for the day after that and fired up the grill to enjoy some dinner.

Since we had church Sunday morning and then I was busy in the afternoon, we decided to take the day off to catch up on some other chores like mowing, bills, etc. But even with that, Tim and Chelsea came over for a couple hours to cut and glue the caps onto the wall.

This week we are focusing on completely finishing a couple parts of the project like the retaining wall, the fence, and yard cleanup. Then we’ll move on to trenching for the French drains and irrigation. I need to get the next walls of the fence started at some point too.

I’d guess that in terms of effort, we’re more than halfway though the project. That’s not too bad for less than two weeks of work! The remaining bit might take us a little longer in terms of calendar days though since the schedule starts to fill up a bit with Father’s Day, Elijah’s birthday, etc.

I had the GoPros running on Saturday for another timelapse. I’ll also throw in a picture of where we finished on Saturday.

benmartens June 10, 2014 Home Improvement

Yard Project

From the moment we looked at the house, Tyla and I have had some dreams about improving our yard. We’re both used to huge lots in the Midwest so having 1/6th of an acre (which is a big lot in this area!) feels constricting. On top of that, lots of the plants were overgrown and the yard was in two tiers making the useable space even smaller. And on top of that, drainage was terrible so the yard was muddy a lot. Now that Elijah is walking, we really wanted to give him a place that was dry and safe to play in.

Thankfully, TimS does this kind of thing for a living and was willing to help us out in his free time. It’s a massive project but we’re trying to knock a lot of it out in just two weeks. Here’s what we’ve done to this point:

  • Remove the trees.
  • Remove all sod in the back yard, all remaining bushes and plants, and the fence. This took two dump runs with a big dual axle dump trailer and one concrete recycling trip with that trailer. Thanks to Don for loaning us his truck so we could pull that trailer!
  • Build a retaining wall along the northeast corner of our lot. Fill in dirt to raise that corner up about three feet to level out the back yard.
  • Build a new fence.
  • Add French drains along the west side of our lot to catch water flowing down the hill as it hits our property. Add drains behind the retaining wall. Tie the downspouts into the drain.
  • Add an irrigation system.

We’re making great progress. All of the demolition happened last Friday on Day 1 of the project. We rented an excavator, and with Tim at the controls the work got done quickly. Since then we’ve been digging postholes (thanks Don and Logan!), building the retaining wall and building the fence. The goal is to get the wall done this week and then rent a machine to trench and move dirt around this weekend.

It’s a massive project but so far it’s going pretty smoothly. The only set back so far has been cutting the Comcast and telephone lines. They were wrapped around and through a big tree stump that we were trying to remove. Oops! If that’s the only problem we have, I’ll be thrilled!

Tyla has the hardest job of all. Normally when I come home I try to take care of Elijah and give her a break and I try to do a lot of that on the weekends too. With me being out in the yard working every minute I’m awake at home, she’s on full time baby duty. This project couldn’t happen without her. Thank you Tyla!

Below you’ll find a timelapse video for our demolition day. Unfortunately both of my GoPros ran out before we got the stump out, but we did get it before the day was over.

And here is a comparison of what the yard looked like before and what it looks like now.

benmartens June 4, 2014 Home Improvement, Video