Construction 2006

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The stairs leading into the backyard have been jacked up so the wall underneath can be reconstructed.

We've been working on the deck and the landing area near the backporch.
We were bothered by a nest of hornets under the eves. When we sprayed, we got dead hornets everywhere!

Judy rebuilt the walkway leading from the deck into the backyard. Actually, she just pointed to stuff and the boys moved the bricks and rocks. They are very strong now!

A better view of the stairs ready for the wall construction underneath.
One thing that drove us crazy this year was re-constuction of our streets in the whole neighborhood. This machine ripped up stuff down to dirt. Judy gave names to all the machines. This one is called the "road chewer".

All the stuff ripped up went into dump trucks.

This is the "road maker". It gets asphalt from the dump truck and out the back comes new road!

When the curbs were ripped out, this is what looked like in our front yard.
Nothing left. The whole neighborhood looked like this.

They had markers all over the place -- sticks with pink ribbons. Judy considered tying the ribbons into pretty bows, but decided that perhaps the road construction dudes wouldn't appreciate it.

To make a bigger mess, let's disc it all up! Judy called this the "ravioli cutter".

Joey came in one day and said, "Mom? Come look at your mailbox...." Our mailbox was set off about 10 feet to the side out of the way.
The mailbox is solid brick with a concrete base. This was not an insignificant task! Some of the neighbors had stone mailboxes which broke upon relocation. The movers repaired every one that they broke, however.

We need to clear out the trees in the backyard to get some light for the grass. Geof started by renting a long chainsaw.

Limbs were downed everywhere.

This is a view of the ground looking straight down from the top of the back wall.
Next, it's time to chip all the branches up.

Geof told the boys it would only be a few bags (two or three....) of chipped up stuff.

Lots of work. The boys all worked hard. This is why we've fed them all these years -- so they can be big and strong to do all the heavy work!

We ended up with more than just a few bags of clippings!
We made numerous bags full of mulch and still had a huge pile.

Our railroad tie wall in the backyard wore out, and we decided to get a brick wall built since city code no longer allowed railroad tie wall as tall as ours.

Here is the wall in the middle of the construction process.

Its nearly 8 feet tall in the tallest spot.
A view around the corner.

Under the deck. The deck needed the new wall for support.

Each brick weighs 72 lbs. Each pallet held 45 bricks. That's 1.62 TONS per pallet!

Early in the construction process. Each brick had to be carefully placed one at a time.

More views during construction. The railroad tie wall was not completely removed. The brick wall was built next to the original wall.

This is Devon, the contractor who built the wall. He worked with just a small crew of 4 college boys, and his 13 year old daughter, Abby.

It was incredibly hot during the summer, with temperatures over 100°F. Our backyard was turned into a desert.

Sheba looks on from the deck. Sheba got to be good friends with the boys doing the work on the wall.

 

Behind the stone, there is a drainage pipe.

You can see the gap between the old tie wall and the new stone one. The gap was filled with coarse and fine gravel -- which was delivered and dumped on our FRONT yard because the truck couldn't get to the back. We have kind and understanding neighbors.

 
A couple of the teens who helped Devon with the work.
Each brick weighed 72 pounds, so the power equipment was really useful.
We had some crepe myrtles on a terraced portion of our wall. These were cut down to almost nothing, but they've already come back with new growth.
All told, we had 27 pallets of bricks. That is 44 tons of brick!