Construction Projects

Before our first batch of chicks got so cruelly eaten, Troy and I had plans to work on their coop. We really did. But I totally sidetracked our Saturdays with one fateful dig of a shovel. In April and May we were doing a lot of work on our yard - lots of weeding and preparing for some tomatoes and other yard care jobs. This one Saturday afternoon I was going after a huge patch of weeds - very TALL weeds - on the north side of our yard. It's a spot where we have known what we wanted to do for a long time. In that spot at the time was a dirt path leading from the gate to the lawn, and then a dirt pile totally filled with weeds. It had been a garden for a long time but we hadn't had good growth there for a while so we were just letting the dirt heal. Anyway, that Saturday I went after the weeds and got it all cleaned up. Troy and I were re-discussing our plans there - that we wanted to put in a pathway and a small retaining wall. I asked Troy what he thought about me just taking the time right then and there to start on a pathway. I mean, what would happen if I just stuck my shovel in the hard-packed dirt right there and started digging? Troy told me to go for it. So I did. I just stuck my shovel in that dirt and I was shocked that the dirt came up so easily. Within an hour I had dug up quite a lot of the dirt that needed removing. Troy then went and got the tiller and really moved some earth. By the end of the day we had a pretty good outline of where we were going to lay some pavers.

Little did I know what we were really getting into. Before I dug up that first shovel of dirt we should have watched the This Old House videos of how to properly lay a path. Turns out to do it right you need to do a lot of things. Mostly you need to buy paver base. Lots and lots of paver base. And one bag of paver base does not go very far. This is where we began to be amazed with the powers of Jarvis the minivan. I mean, without Inigo the land cruiser and the trailer, we had to load up tons and tons of material. Bags of paver base. Bags of sand. Many many paver stones. Plus I kept underestimating the amount of paver base that we needed. I mean, I tried to actually calculate the amount needed, but I did it wrong. Like three times. But eventually we got it about right and started getting the stones in place.

It was at that time that Troy came to the realization that it was really dumb for us to make the pathway and  not make the retaining wall at the same time. The retaining wall was going to border one edge of the pathway and what would we do to support the pathway until the wall was made? So we decided to start the wall and began our second round of trips to both Lowe's and Home Depot, lugging more super heavy stones and bags of paver base and gravel.  

I know that we ended up doing so much more work than we expected and it probably should have waited until the coop was done, but at the same time, I'm so not sorry. We have wanted to create a pathway in that spot and we could have put it off forever. Instead, we just went for it, dug in and made our pathway. We did a great job, too, and really feel please with the path and wall we ended up with. 

This project also helped me realize that I'm kind of addicted to spending my Saturdays working myself to  the bone, so hard that the next day I can barely move, so hard that you just have to order take out that night because you're too spent to possibly feed yourself. You look back on your day and see the work you did and just feel awesome. I love it.