1. Even though it is my day off I was up at 6:30 to await the delivery of mountains of topsoil and compost and drain rock and path fines and 4 tons of Blue Stone for the path on the sideyard. It is now 8 am and I have the topsoil and the compost and nothing else. I won’t start to panic until the landscape guy is here with his crew of 5 and wondering what it is they are supposed to do.
2. I am also awaiting the sprinkler expert who is coming (between 7 and 7:30 but note above, it is now 8am and he isn’t here yet.) He is coming to repair the water pipe to the old sprinklers that was broken by the paver guys. The paver guys fixed it once and I woke up in the morning to a busted pipe and water gushing down the driveway. They fixed it again. It broke again, though we caught it before the gushing stage. Sprinkler expert guy said paver guys tried to glue PVC to copper pipe with PVC glue. Don’t try this at home. It doesn’t work. After sprinkler expert fixes this I will still be waiting for the hot California sun to dry out the saturated dirt so I can tell if there are any other leaks because right now there are giant wet spots in places I don’t think should be wet anymore.
3. There is a hole in the backyard 2 feet wide by 2 feet deep dug by the phone company 2 weeks ago in order to repair the underground phone line that had gone dead. This was the same underground phone line that when we called the “call before you dig” told us didn’t exist. It took a week for the phone company to come out and find the problem. Then they had to call a different guy to come dig the hole. Then a DIFFERENT guy had to come fix the problem in the hole. But he can’t put the dirt back in the hole. It have been almost 2 weeks since it has been fixed and there is still a giant pile of dirt next to the hole and big piece of plywood covering the hole. We’d put the dirt back ourselves but there’s that liability issue that I am sure would come back to bite us.
4. The pavers over the stamped concrete in the courtyard are cracking. We hope it is just from getting settled into their sand beds and being tapped too hard. They had to be hand tapped since they are only 1″ pavers over concrete (due to drainage issues that would be caused if we had used the standard ones because they would block water at the fence line. Today the courtyard will see a lot of activity (see #1) and I worry how they are going to hold up. Thankfully they have a lifetime warranty.
5. I am excited about the work that will be done today (though I don’t know how they are going to get it all done in one day. First thing they will do is put in a dry well. This is not my choice but needs to be done because we will be moving the two ACs into the back yard where they belong (hopefully come fall) which means tons of repiping of things that have to go right down that sideyard. And the city of San Jose wants a drywell for the condensation. Oddly enough the drywell has to be a 2 foot wide by 2 foot deep hole just like in #3. Alas, it has to be on the sideyard. After that they will install a bluestone path with red twig dogwoods lining it on either side. And an irrigation system for that area. And fill it with dirt and path fines and make it all pretty. In one day. I hope.
Note – it is 8:18 and no one else is here yet. I am not worrying. Really I am not. Not yet.
Good grief, what a massive amount of labor and organization! It must feel like you’re herding cats. Thank goodness it won’t last long (she says hopefully…)
Yes, that’s it exactly! Herding cats.
Last long? Well, define long. LOL. Compare to my lifetime, not so much. The rest of the summer to get the hardscaping done, probably.
I hope everyone showed up!
They did and they are working away. The path is down but not done and the curves are just what I wanted. Dry well is done.
We have WAY too much stone and decomposed granite though so we’ve been working on ideas on how to put it to use while we have the crew still here. It’s an adventure.