Rocking Out, The Thrilling Conclusion

This lawn project is definitely one of the more challenging home improvement projects I've taken on. One thing I was thinking about often while working on it was how different this was from building the fence.

It reminded me a lot of the difference between the more creative work I'm doing now an the more technical work I'd been doing for the last several years. The fence was kind of like the more technical tasks. It was easy to get a sense or progress while I was working on it and seeing the end to it. Once a piece was in, I could look it over, maybe test it a little, and be pretty sure that part was done or at least was going to perform properly under the expected conditions.

The lawn felt more like the creative work in that it was hard to progress through all the phases sure that I had truly finished them. It seemed that every time I stopped to level or took a closer look at a particular part, I could find some reason to re-rake or re-till to get more rocks out, or re-grade to get a better slope. What looked good one day looked awful the next. All of this while not being totally sure if I was doing any of it the right way! After a certain point you have to just say it's good enough, but whether or not it wasn't will always sort of nag at you.

Anyway, for posterity, here's the breakdown:

A fair amount of gravel and rocks/concrete was mixed into the soil under the tarp.Pick-axing up the yard. This went quick, but wow, was it tiring.Lifting up the tarp revealed that, along with the gravel that made it under the tarps, there were a lot of rocks and concrete chunks mixed into the topsoil. Maybe from a previous project. I didn't know what was under there, so it wasn't a good idea to run the tiller through it with out breaking up the surface first.

After tilling, adding in some fresh topsoil, re-tilling, planing & grading, rolling, more planing, etc...A bunch of hastily selected sod pieces from the Depot.It's not a fatal mistake, but I really wish I had a quick look at all the sod pieces I picked up. A fair number had yellow/brown spots or were totally yellow, probably from having been out on their lot all day. They seem to be all greening up, but it wasn't very satisfying to look at the finished project and see all these dead patches.

The morning after.After five days...About two weeks.All new sod will look okay the first 4-6 weeks, supposedly. After that, any problems with the soil or setup will start to emerge. I just used my snapshot cam on these shots (didn't want to risk the new SLR), so I see the exposures were different. Eh.

Some notes:

Before/after dusk-masks. Be kind to your lungs. Use a dust mask. 20 or so pieces of sod may stress your suspension.Most of the gravel, rocks, and concrete dug up. This actually isn't all of it, the rubble pile is now probably taller by about half a foot. Next step is to find some way to get rid of all the rocks/concrete/gravel. Apparently most garbage services have sites called 'transfer stations' that accept bulk waste from construction (which this qualifies as). Fees vary based on weight. Berkeley's will take up to 330 lbs. for about $30 (per one visit). The trick is getting it all there in one visit, which probably means a rental. Arranging for some special bin or hauling costs about $200, again depending on weight. Some places recycle, some don't, I'm just going to go with what's closest.

My guess at the work is roughly two good 40-hour weeks to do this. If it wasn't for all the gravel and rocks I came across, it might have gone faster. It might also have helped if I opted to just dig up and throw out the entire top six-inches of top-soil instead of trying to rake the rocks out of it. That would have been complicated for other reasons.