Landscaping = hard work

It has come to my attention recently that I didn't exactly say why Clint and I were putting so much work into our house. Why didn't the contractor do it? Well, it is called sweat equity. It's actually pretty cool for people who don't have money for their down payment. This is how it works. Any skills/house labor that you know how to do, you can do it on your house. The Company who builds the houses, in this case SunView Homes, gives you a voucher to go and buy supplies to do the labor. All of the labor cost that you would have origianally paid other people to do, goes towards your down payment for the house, or gets taken off the sale price of the house. It helped us to get a pretty good size down payment. So that is why we painted and are doing our landscaping for our house. Is it worth it? Not really, for how much time and effort we are putting into it, but is it worth the down payment part? Sure. However, if we had the money for a downpayment, I wouldn't have done it. It's exhausting and somewhat stressful.

So Clint and I've been really busy this last week and a half... and it will still continue that way until we closed. So below is a picture of our house as we left it yesterday (Saturday, June 5). As you can tell, we have grass, trees, shrubs and flowers. However, don't think it was easy!

It all started last Thursday when we began getting ready to do the sprinkler system. We arrived at the house and Clint, Nancy, Nova and I began raking up all the rocks....which, by the way, we will encounter more rocks later.

On Friday, we rented a trencher - there was NO way we were going to dig all the trenches in that Magna soil, which is purely rock and clay. Luckily for us, Nova's mother-in-law let us use her truck so we could get a trencher and load up stones in the back of the truck. Clint works for Adagio water features and they had two piles of stones that were broken so they let us get however many stones we wanted for stepping stones.






We Trenched on Friday and on Saturday, we began to dig in all the places where we couldn't trench, such as gas lines, electric lines, etc. Come to find out, we could have used the trencher for those places, but we didn't know that they were really deep. The person who came and blue-staked our house said he couldn't guarentee that they cables and such were deep enough so we didn't chance it - and thus we dug, and dug, and dug. Chris, who has the strength of 5 men, came and helped us dig. It was AWFUL!





Tyler was so nice to help us bore a line under the sidewalk, which was extremely hard. I think it took him almost 2 hours. There were rocks, and it was hard clay. Way-to-go Tyler!

Like I said before, Magna has horrendous soil! It is mainly hard clay and rocks - lots of them! Big rocks too! Plus lots of tiny rocks, as if gravel were poured on top of the soil and mixed in with them. Friday came to a close and we still didn't have all the digging done.

So on Monday, Memorial day, my family came up and helped us dig. They were amazing! Cody, Jessie, my mom and dad all helped us dig. They did most of the back that needed digging, and that took a while! That Monday, we had all the pipe finished for the front yard, so we buried the pipes and I began to rake all the rocks up - which was a lot! We shoveled all those rocks in the front yard up and put them in the neighbors yard (don't worry no one lives there) or across the street on the empty lot.




However, the backyard sprinkler piping was still not finished. Thus, my family digging the rest of the trenches. As Monday came to a close we hadn't even begun to pipe in the back yet. Putting in a sprinkler system is hard work! My muscles ached, along with everyone elses, and caluses and blisters were beginning to appear on people's hands.

So for the next week (Tuesday through Friday) we went to Magna everyday after work. Our basement apartment was getting dirty and dishes and food shopping were neglected. We had to get the front yard completely finished before we closed, so we were working hard.

On Wednesday, my dad came down during the day and tilled our front yard and leveled it. It took him 5 hours and 20 wheelbarrow loads of rocks to do it. What an awesome guy! It looked so good! Our contractor complemented him on his leveling job, which is good because he's usually a grouch.

Just so you know, it is part of the city's code in that subdivision to have the front yard finished, so it was part of our sweat equity agreement. That is why we've been working hard to get the front done and the back was neglected for a bit.

We also received our voucher to get shrubs, flowers and trees. So we went to the nursery and got those and planted them during the week. Luckily for us, Russell was down and had his jeep and he helped transport our trees and shrubs back to our house. This helped so we didn't have to pay for a shipping fee or get a truck to transport them. He also helped plant the trees, which was more digging and I didn't feel like digging some more.

Yesterday, Saturday, we finally got our sod. However, they didn't order enough sod for us! On the east side of the driveway, we didn't have any sod for that. They shorted us about 168ish square feet of sod. I guess the contractor guy didn't measure our lot. What an idiot! Because now we have to wait till Thursday to put it in and that just puts us behind even more. So we were bugged. So we put the sod in, decorated the flowerbeds, cleaned up all our garbage and made the front yard look nice.


Nancy and Brian, Clint's parents, were so nice to help us lay sod AND help us every single day with the sprinkler system.


I washed the rocks and used them as a barrier between the sod and our flower beds. I planted a lot of the flowers and brought some of the bark over to cover the ground in the flower beds. I'm a lot better at that type of stuff than sprinkler system stuff.

Clint getting the sod to lay on the front yard.

These are pictures of the flower beds and the rocks lining them. Please note that these rocks were some, keyword SOME, of the rocks that we dug up from trenching. Crazy huh? So I thought I'd put them to use and use them as a barrier lining.


It you'll notice the pine shrubs. We HAD to get these as part of code. Weird huh? Clint and I weren't a fan, but oh well. We had to get 2 flowering pear trees (those exact ones, which we liked anyway) and 3 mugo pines, 6 shrubs of our choice and 12 perennials of our choice.
This is a picture of the backyard with the pipe FINALLY buried (which we did on Saturday) and the funny pipe sticking up. Clint and I did a rough raking of all the rocks, which again was a lot, and dumped them into an empty lot. We still need to put the sprinkler heads on in the back, level it and them we'll start to seed it when we move in. We're not paying for sod. Seed is way less expensive. By the way, our "backyard" is actually kind of our side yard. It's on the side of our house and we have about 10ish feet in our actual backyard. It works, it's kindof nice becuase it's a little more private. Both our neighbors on either side of us have "back" yards, so ours is more private. Oh ya, the rocks that you see are our retaining wall. The contractor built us that retaining wall because the house east of us was about 2 feet higher and their water would have cause pools of water in our back yard. So that was nice of them to do that so we don't have puddles in our back/sideyard.


These are some pictures that have happened on the inside of the house. They put in our cabinets, cupboards, light fixtures, toilets, lanoleum, carpet, and mostly all of the inside stuff, except appliances. This is the kitchen, we were going for a coffee shop feel. I think we achieved that. The cupboards are the same in the bathrooms and the counters are slightly different.



This is our hallway. For some reason, my computer, or Clint's camera wouldn't let me rotate the picture. Oh well, you get the idea.
Our front room with carpet. We really like our color selection of carpet.

So needless to say, we've been way to busy for our own good. But we have about 1.5 weeks until we close. There are still a few things left (we still need to put our doors back on the hinges now that the carpet is in) and finish the backyard, and some front yard sodding, but it's pretty much there. Thank goodness for it being almost done! I'm tired! Thanks again to everyone that helped: Nancy, Brian, Chris, Nova, Russell, Tyler, Cody, Jessica, Mom (Joyce), andDad (Scott).