Flashback: From Down 'n' Dirty to Green & Glorious

I've been so caught up in Christmas decorating and shopping (and blogging about Christmas decorating and shopping), that I forgot about enlightening you with the story of our sod installation. (I'm sure you've all been waiting on the edge of your seats.) While not as fun as talking about Christmas, I must follow through with my flashbacks. So settle in... it's another long read!
For those of you who are following along, we had just had our water well drilled (way back on May 22, 2008). Once that was completed and hooked up to the sprinkler system, we were ready to transform our barren yard into a lush lawn. After mulling over our options, the instant gratification factor of sod outweighed the lower cost of seed. Living on a dirt lot was getting old quickly. Just to remind you, this is what our house looked like right after we moved in.

But first (isn't there always a But first?)... we had to essentially re-grade the ground to make sure we had the best surface possible to lay the sod. This involved four main tasks:
1) Renting a tiller to tear up the hardened soil so the sod could take root easier
2) Using a drag harrow to loosen and even out the soil
3) Hauling in more dirt to fill low areas and make sure the grade sloped away from our house
4) Grooming the dirt for a smooth surface. This involved dragging a wire fence of sorts behind my brother-in-law's lawn tractor. It also involved me and my father-in-law holding onto each other's arms for stability as we stood top of the fence to weigh it down while we circled the yard. I'm sure the people driving by were very entertained by our DIY methods (and no, I don't have a picture of that part).

This is what 4 tons of dirt looks like. Not that much, really. Until you have to shovel it all.

 

The prepped dirt. Listen closely... can't you just hear it crying out for sod?

Finally, after all of the prep work, it was time to have our sod delivered from the sod farm. We scheduled the date only to have to re-schedule it again after a heavy rainstorm the night before--turns out they can't cut the sod if it's too wet. So we could do nothing but schedule it again and hope for dry weather (which is usually what we get around here). But alas, another thunderstorm rolled through, delaying our plans once more. I felt like everything was working against us, and I was afraid all our hard work was washing away right before our eyes.


The third time around, it all worked out. On June 21, 2008 -- nearly three months after we moved into our house -- the grass was finally on its way (cue dramatic music). By the way, if you've ever wondered what 780 rolls of sod looks like, wonder no more:

As you can see, we enlisted some help for this project. Along with his parents, Luke was able to wrangle some of the players from the 8th grade basketball team he coached. They got to build some much-needed muscle, and it only cost us a pizza party. Win/win.


Getting started was pretty intimidating. We had to work fast, so the sod wouldn't dry out. But after developing an assembly line of sorts and getting into a rhythm, it went quicker than I thought. The boys carried over the rolls of sod (which were deceptively heavy), and we butted them up next to each other to make sure there were no gaps. 

A few hours later, everyone was sore and dripping with sweat, but our lawn was now a lush, green carpet. I had never seen anything so beautiful. Weeks worth of intense, dirty labor had culminated to this moment. And to make it even more satisfying, we used every last roll of sod and didn't need any extra. Props to Hubby's mad estimation skillz.

Immediately after the sod was installed, we had to soak it with water like crazy, to the point of being squishy to walk on. This is where having a well came in handy; otherwise our water bill would have skyrocketed. We also fertilized it with New Lawn Starter, and implemented a regular, heavy watering schedule for the next few weeks. I had irrational fears that all our sod would just start browning and dying, but we must have done something right because it's still green!

And so ends our sod saga (was that a sigh of relief I just heard?). After this, we took a big break from any lawn projects, even though we still had no landscaping to speak of. But after paying for a sprinkler system, a well, and sod, the ol' pocketbook needed a breather, too. (Even though we saved a lot of money by installing almost everything ourselves.)
I'll have more to share later on, as we've finally gotten around to some landscaping this year. But for now, it's making me tired just re-living this part. If you've made it to the end of this post, thanks for sticking with it!

Flashback: Well, how about that?

If you'll recall from my previous post on our sprinkler system, we had almost finished it up until we realized there was another very important step we needed to take...something we had neglected to research, being the naive first-time homebuyers we were.

As it turns out, most homes in the area we live have their own wells in their yard to access the large water table that's below this part of town. Some have their well hooked up to their whole house, and some only have it hooked up to their outside faucets and sprinkler systems. After talking to several neighbors, we found out that having a well would be a big money-saver in the long run, even though it's a large cost upfront. After all, once you pay for the installation, the water is essentially free after that. We decided to get ours hooked up to our sprinkler system, since we knew we'd be using a lot of H20 once we installed our sod.

Drilling a well is obviously not a DIY project. We got some recommendations for a local drilling company, and set up a time for them to come drill. When the day came, we both took off work to come oversee the process. It was a good thing we hadn't laid sod or built our fence yet, because they had to back their big honker of a rig right up into our backyard.

The whole process was pretty interesting... and a little frightening at times. See for yourself:

When they started the drilling process, this is what spewed up from the bowels of the earth (ok, so maybe it was only from a few feet down):

 

 Eventually, we had our own little lake in our backyard. Lovely, no?

Fifty feet later (at $16/foot), they were ready to install the casing for the well (the long white tube).

After back-filling the rest of the hole around the casing with sand, they installed the actual pump mechanism.

Finally, after some water testing, it was all over. Our very own well! Actually, the whole thing took less than two hours. We also learned a lot from the process. For instance, have you ever seen brown or even black stains on sidewalks or driveways? Here's a couple pictures from the sidewalks down our street:

Turns out this is caused by the iron content from the groundwater. It's hit-or-miss, and some houses get it worse than others depending on their location. We've experienced it ourselves too (the picture below is what the edge of our driveway looks like now), but there's not much you can do about it. Plus, you get used to it when you see it everywhere else.

Once the well was finished, we were able to get it hooked up to the sprinkler system and finish that part, too. And so ends another [painfully long] chapter of the saga of our lawn. Next step? Getting some GREEN!

Flashback: All Systems Go

When we bought our house, I knew there was going to be some manual labor involved in the near future, since it was lawn-less. Looking back, though, I had no idea! As you can probably guess from the picture in my previous post, our first order of business was to do something about the desert that existed around our house. But before we could even think about planting grass seed or laying sod, we needed to put in a sprinkler system. And, before I continue any further, I should inform you that my husband Luke’s three favorite letters are D, I, and Y. That makes me, by association, a DIY-er as well (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Luckily, Luke had helped a family friend install a sprinkler system once before, so he had some idea of what was involved. We also took a free class that was offered at a local sprinkler system company, and paid $65 for a DIY design and materials list to give us a starting point.

Once we had our system mapped out to our liking (thanks to AutoCAD), it was time to buy all the parts we needed – from elbows, tees, and couplings, to rotors and spray heads, to poly pipe and funny pipe (although I never understood what was so funny about it). We also rented a Ditch Witch to pull our poly pipe deep below the ground. But unfortunately a machine couldn't do it all for us. We did our share of trench-digging too, in order to find the poly pipes so we could connect them to each other, and make our connections to the sprinkler heads via the funny pipe. Yeesh.

While we were digging, we also ran into some lovely construction waste buried in the dirt, like some sort of concrete graveyard. Here are the remains piled on our driveway.

These are three sprinkler heads connected to the funny pipe... it looked like some sort of giant prehistoric clawprint, which is why I probably took the photo.

And these are some of the many trenches we dug to get to the poly pipe after it was pulled through the ground by the Ditch Witch. We had to be very careful when digging to find the pipe, so as not to puncture it with the shovel.

I took this picture to celebrate our very first connection!

The whole thing was a very physically and emotionally draining process as far as I was concerned (the phrase "blood, sweat, and tears" comes to mind), and there were times I felt we’d never get it done. At one point, we had unsightly blue poly pipe sticking up all over the yard for quite some time, which prompted some questions from passersby about what it was for. Not too long ago, I probably would have asked the same question, but now I was all too familiar with it!

  

After what seemed like several weeks of working on the sprinkler system whenever we could after work or on the weekends (as long as the weather was cooperating), we had finally almost finished it – thanks to the help of Luke’s parents, too. Why almost? Well, I'll get to that in my next post.

I can truthfully say that I'm proud we did it all ourselves and saved hundreds of dollars in the process (even though my sanity and overall well-being was put to the test). However, once was enough... one of my prerequisites for our next house is that it already has a sprinkler system... or we'll pay someone else to do it!

I know I didn't go into a lot of details on the whole process (maybe because I've tried to block it from my memory?), but if you have any specific questions about it, I'd be happy to try and answer them! Likewise, if you have any of your own sprinkler system adventures -- or misadventures -- feel free to share!