Big Project, Big Improvement

We've been quietly getting quote for a big project around here that I haven't told you about. And now that the work is finished, I can show the big reveal. Can you guess what's going on from this picture?

Here's some white space, so I don't spoil any attempts to guess
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We took the plunge and had the back of our lot completely cleared out!

I'll cut right to the before and after pictures and then go into the details:

After 5 years almost exactly (September 15), we finally decided to hire help to clear out our back yard. We were making progress on the smaller sections of overgrowth, like here and here and here (small is relative - they made up a huge portion of the yard). We always wanted to clear away the triangular section in the back. We hired someone in the fall of 2012 to clear it out, but they mostly just hacked it down to the ground, without removing much at the roots. That might have been ok if we had been willing to maintain it, but it grew back so quickly we couldn't keep up. Plus there was a lot of poison ivy and poison sumac in there.

We realized late last month that if we wanted to clear it away and put grass down this year, now was the time to do it (late summer/early fall is the time to put down grass seed). So we scrambled to get some quotes and, despite the high cost, committed to getting this done. After 5 years of saying we would "get to it eventually" we realized that if we hadn't done it before we had a baby, now post-baby we would never get around to it.

I think we made a good decision. It took 4 qualified people almost 2 days to clear everything out. Imagine 2 inexperienced people trying to do it while watching a baby....not gonna happen. First they pulled up everything manually (because they were going to plant grass seed immediately, they couldn't rely on chemicals  - which worked out well because I didn't really want them to use chemicals anyway). 

Originally we planned to leave some ivy under the trees, since it's too shady there for grass. But we decided to have them remove that too, because - as we learned previously - it's hard to maintain ivy and not have it take over. So they got rid of it and put down mulch.

They also got rid of the small tree stump leftover from this project. They didn't take the stumps out from the larger trees - it wasn't worth it since they are in the back corner and would cost a lot to remove.

They brought in some topsoil to level everything out, and then laid down mulch (under trees), grass, and hay. The weather have been very helpful and light sprinkles everyday has meant we haven't had to water yet.

Here are some more before, during, and after pictures taken from our second story.

You can't even see the little wood stove in this picture:

Here we are after day one, before we decided to pulled the additional ivy from the right-side. We're keeping it along the back as a privacy screen from the neighboring parking lot. It ends at a cement pad (which we realized one it was uncovered was a lot bigger than we thought - plenty of room for some lawn furniture), so hopefully that will help control the spreading. Maybe eventually we can plant something back there.

And here's the final picture. Hopefully the grass grows well. We have been seeing a lot of birds back there trying to eat the seeds.

Honestly I don't think we realized how much yard we had. It's been so overgrown since we bought the place that it was hard to visualize. It turns out this is about a third of our yard. It will be nice one the baby is walking to not have to keep her away from that section. And now there's plenty of room for a future swing set!

We also had the landscapers aerate the lawn (the real way, by removing giant plugs, and not by making spikes in the ground like the last people we hired - we were very clear about that), but I wasn't home to get a picture of that, unfortunately. They did the front and the back and then over seeded the front.