Our back yard has been a big ‘ole mud pit all winter long. The Red Jory Soil that is sought after for growing pinot noir, has been making messes in my house and was starting to drive me a little crazy. After adding a shop in our back yard to store things (which made the mud problem even worse), I declared that the next project was to build a path. I told The Renaissance Man, “We must build our way out of the mud!”
I promptly purchased a can of Surveyors Paint and we started marking away. The Renaissance Man and I came up with a 4.5 foot path tight to the fence that would wrap around the shop at the top of our yard. Easy right?
Then we called in the reinforcement. My Dad was a Union Carpenter for 35 years, and over the last several months of home ownership, I’ve realize how lucky we are to have him on our team. My Dad takes our vision, adds in all of his years of experience and “lessons learned,” and comes up with solutions that I didn’t even realize were possible. I always knew that my Dad was a carpenter, but he’s really more like an engineer/artist who works in the medium of lumber and concrete. I’m continually amazed with his creativity and enthusiasm for problem solving.
A few days after we laid down the surveyors paint, we came home to a path that had been string-lined to elevation so we could “understand how the path would look and feel.” Thanks, Dad! We had more elevation issues than originally perceived.
After talking it out, we decided to go with a mini-retaining wall out of pressure-treated wood, and we’d have to make some rather tricky cuts in order to account for both the slope and the elevation change. And with that, we began targeting Memorial Day weekend for our big project. Friday and Sunday would be working on the path, and Saturday and Monday would be for rest and recovery!
We kicked things off on Friday morning with a trip to Home Depot. Never in my life have I looked at so many pieces of lumber to find the perfect one. My Dad has an eye for detail, and so boards needed to be straight and have good grain lines, we left with quite the haul.
The Renaissance Man deserves a big high five for all of his hard work, he dug so many holes for the retaining wall and mixed all ten bags of concrete. Meanwhile, I was the gopher for my Dad all day. And I have to say, this all happened super fast! When my Dad and The Renaissance Man get together, they work at rapid fire pace feeding off of one another with ideas, action, and hard work. I was proud and impressed with the progress!
By 6pm, the concrete was mixed, poured and setting. Not too bad for a Friday!
We started up work again on Sunday. I was remiss in getting progress pictures throughout the day, but instead have photos of where things finished up. The lining for the rest of the path was completed, some foot boards were added to the fence to hold in the gravel in place, and we started moving gravel just as the sky started to spit rain.
Up next, we need to finish moving in the gravel, rent a hand compacter to lock it into place, pour a concrete ramp in front of the shop, and start beautifying the wedge space between the path and the wall. We certainly have more to do, but the success of the weekend is that we’re finally out of the mud! Wahooo!