Men at Work

We were very blessed to have my brother and Brad's dad, uncle, and brother with us this weekend to help us with some much needed manual labor at the 909 House. The original plan was to prep the backyard (clear out remaining yard debris), mark the yard for the fence and dig all the holes for the fence posts. With that in mind, Brad went ahead and rented an auger and had it on stand-by for the moment that they finished prepping the backyard. Interestingly enough though, that moment never came.

After cutting up and piling 6 truck loads of yard debris (cut down vines, branches, trees, roots, etc.), driving most of them to the dump (don't ask where the other loads went), clearing out the 4-foot pile of leaves in the back, right-hand side of the yard (a result of many years of leaf blowing from the church behind us), mulching those leaves down with our lawn mower and then scattering them throughout the yard and blowing the remaining leaves to the side of the yard to determine the amount of concrete that was really in our backyard, there just wasn't enough time to start up that auger. As sad as that realization is, it might actually be a blessing in disguise. After clearing out all of the debris and realizing how much concrete really was in the backyard (you may remember that the previous owners used the house as a beauty salon and they paved over a good portion of the backyard to create a parking lot for their customers), the guys discovered that it's going to take a good deal more work and money to dig up the concrete that goes all the way to our property line ... this is exactly where we were planning to put the fence ... and well, you can't use the auger to drill holes through the concrete. So ... needless to say, we're investigating other fencing options that may work around the concrete, or 'through' the concrete, and that may turn out to be a bit cheaper. (Not too bad.)

And plus, you should see our backyard. I'm sure it hasn't looked this good in 15 or 20 years! Thanks guys! We still have a long way to go: Some concrete removal, tilling, new soil and topsoil (if we want to even hope for grass) and plenty of hours of general landscaping. I enjoy that stuff, so that will be something we can look forward to for many years (?) to come. (Hopefully not that long, but I don't want to underestimate it.)

Here are some of the BEFORE pictures of the yard after my mom and I initially cut down a good deal of the vines, bushes and trees that covered the fence line:


















Here's proof of the 'fruit of the guys' labor':
(You'll notice a gradual decrease of yard debris as the weekend went on.)









































In addition to the landscaping work that we (the guys) did this weekend, the floor guy was in on Saturday and sanded the majority of the floors. What a difference! Despite their age, I think they're going to really look beautiful! They're going to finish up around the edges tomorrow and then we'll have to pick our stain and they'll finish them up by the end of the week. How exciting