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You are here: Home / Landscape / Yard History 2010 (Part 1)

Yard History 2010 (Part 1)

January 21, 2014 by SmartGirl 2 Comments

A lot happened in 2010!  (Check out 2009 here.)  It was a brutal winter and we learned quickly that sharing a driveway with our neighbor sucked!  Our driveway was L shaped, with two exits, which is great, but not if your jerk neighbor blocks one exit with his car.  Our driveway was only wide enough for one car, so whichever car pulled in first would get stuck.  Now obviously this is a 21st century problem and one that many people have with their own driveway.  BUT my driveway was designed to be used on both sides and it pissed me off that my idiot neighbor parked his car to block one exit.  No sooner would hubby shovel out our entire driveway, then that jerk would park his car right at the exit, so we couldn’t use it.  My husband had to trek through the snow to get to his front door to ask him to move his car, just so we could use the exit WE had shoveled!  Sheesh!  I was starting to devise ways to split the road in half.  Giant planter boxes kept coming to mind.Smart Girls DIY - Landscape 2010 4 I still think it’s funny that our swing set was right up against the back of the house.  There just wasn’t any other place to put it at the time.Smart Girls DIY - Landscape 2010 3This next set of pictures were taken in March.  All the while ideas were brewing in my head.  I was watching Yard Crashers religiously and I borrowed every landscaping, hard scaping, gardening book my library had.  I also made good {mental} notes about what worked and what didn’t work about the yard.  The left side of the house, which included the perimeter of the garage, was steeply sloped and it was very difficult to walk along there.

In this picture, you can see one of our downspouts aimed right at our {nice} neighbor’s property.
These pictures are crazy to me because the yard looks nothing like this now.  The deck is still there, but everything around it has changed.  Soon there will be retaining walls, stairs, gravel, new deck railings, etc.
Then I started to draw out my ideas.  This was the first of many.  I made a copy of our survey and started drawing over it.  The most important thing was making level areas.   Our house sits below our {mean} neighbor to the right and above our {nice} neighbors to the left.   The yard sloped from right to left, with zero level spots.  We wanted to change that!  I devised 3 distinct levels.
These next photos were taken in May 2010, days before we tore up the whole yard.  My brother has tons more pictures,but it could be years before he decides to send them to me.Smart Girls DIY - Landscape 2010 13
Smart Girls DIY - Landscape 2010 14
Smart Girls DIY - Landscape 2010 15Smart Girls DIY - Landscape 2010 16
 Two days later the yard was looking like this…
Smart Girls DIY - Landscape 2010 17

We rented a Bobcat over Memorial Day weekend (so we could get an extra day for free) and I honestly didn’t drive it much.  That thing was crazy!  I swear it did more harm than good.  Every time you went to scoop up dirt, the tires would leave these gigantic holes and you couldn’t even tell where you just scooped up dirt.  It was a mess.  My brother had to come down to help, otherwise hubs and I would’ve killed each other.  My brother had never driven a Bobcat either, but he was more a voice of reason.  But it was definitely exciting!!

My excitement ended when the zoning inspector came knocking on my door Tuesday morning.  Apparently I needed a permit to level out my yard.  Oops!  Yeah, and not only did I need a permit, but I needed a topographic survey by an engineer which cost me $1000, and $500 in escrow with the town.  Sheesh!  This all took months to straighten out, so the yard sat like this ALL SUMMER LONG!  I wasn’t even allowed to dig with a shovel.  Nothing.  The kids got so dirty that summer, digging in the dirt.Smart Girls DIY - Landscape 2010 19

Smart Girls DIY - Landscape 2010 20 Smart Girls DIY - Landscape 2010 21
Smart Girls DIY - Landscape 2010 22We used the Bobcat to help us (hubby, brother and myself) move the swing set down a level without having to take too much of it apart.
Smart Girls DIY - Landscape 2010 23
Smart Girls DIY - Landscape 2010 24 Smart Girls DIY - Landscape 2010 25 Smart Girls DIY - Landscape 2010 26 Smart Girls DIY - Landscape 2010 27

Crazy that we lived that way, right?  I’ll show you tomorrow that 2010 ended pretty well (Part 2 HERE).  Sometime that summer I took a can of spray paint and painted a line down the center of the asphalt road and wrote PRIVATE PROPERTY on my side of the line, facing the neighbor.   For the complete yard history click here.

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Filed Under: Landscape Tagged With: Yard Crashing, yard history

« Yard Makeover 2009 – Before
Yard History 2010 (Part 2) »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Julie @ Being Home says

    June 25, 2013 at 6:45 am

    You go! Love that picture of you in the bobcat! Why is your neighbor not being considerate? How frustrating. 🙁

    Reply
    • Smart Girl says

      June 26, 2013 at 3:42 pm

      Thank you! Our neighbor is RIDICULOUS! This was just the start of it. I’ll explain more in the next post. He’s evil.

      Reply

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