Happy Memorial Day 2012! Memorial Day Weekend in Western Washington can be dicey in terms of weather most of the time. That being said, most everyone seems to escape the metropolitan area to find some sun and warmer weather. So lots of people take Friday off from work in addition to getting Monday off for the holiday -- and they make it a 4-day weekend. Well, Jared followed that theory, he took Friday off, but it wasn't to escape the city, it was to get a head start on our latest project.
When Kristina arrived home from work on Friday, she saw that Jared had removed a section of dirt alongside the driveway (by the way, our driveway is 100 ft long). In addition, 8 tons of crushed rock had also been delivered and was sitting in the driveway awaiting dispersal throughout various areas of the yard.
Kristina had a tennis lesson scheduled, so she headed out and left Jared to continue. When Kristina arrived home from tennis, Jared had installed a border edge along the driveway where he had excavated the dirt, installed electrical wire for our driveway lights, and he had laid down landscaping material to hopefully keep the weeds out of our too be installed crushed rock. That was a lot of progress in TWO hours! Wow!
Soon after that, Jared ran out of daylight and energy and we decided to pick it up again Saturday morning.
Saturday morning, we got right to dispersing crushed rock. First order of business was to fill in the border along the driveway and sidewalk. So with their shovels in hands, Jared and Kristina got to work on the HUGE rock pile. The front walkway and driveway went much faster than we had anticipated and in no time, we were done -- and it looked much better!
Looking towards the street...
Looking at our house from the street...
Next up was filling up a pathway that Jared had built the previous weekend. Jared used pressure treated timbers to create a "Forest Service" like path from our backyard to the Tolt Pipeline Trail behind our house. Since the framework was there for the most part, Kristina cut and laid the landscaping material while Jared did a few tweaks on the structure. After that, it was more hauling rock. So once again, we loaded up the wheelbarrow and made several trips from the driveway to the backyard. Once again, it went fairly quickly and we were done in no time. The finished trail looked quite good.
We filled in the rest of the pathway to the trail with more crushed rock. We already had smaller river rock in this area, which drains well, but it tough to walk through to get where you need to go. It is much easier to walk on now and it looks great!
Here's a shot from the trail looking into our backyard.
The next order of business was to scrape out the mud, moss, weeds, and grass on NW side of the house. We keep our trash can, recyclable can, and our compost cans on this side of the house. It is always soggy on this side of the house and it practically gets no sun at all. Since nothing really grows but moss we decided to put crushed rock here too. It sure makes things looks cleaner, and it is much easier to roll the cans in and out to the street!
We had some extra rock, so we also continued on a path to the backyard along the dog run. The plan is to install a border and get rid of that ivy, but for now at least the path is there, and NOT muddy!
As we continued to try and use up all of the 8 tons of rock, we decided to continue the border from the front of the house and along the SE side of the house. Again, we had to first scrape out the mud and weeds. Then we installed landscape material -- followed by more wheelbarrows of crushed rock! Once again, it looks so much better.
And last but not least, some more shots of the backyard. It looks really good and we both definitely feel an "ahhhh" when we look at it!
Are we done yet?
