Grading

It's July, 2010.  My newly installed sump hasn't kicked on once.  It's dry as a bone now in my yard as the heat yellows my grass.

I'm still in a holding pattern as far as the basement's concerned.  I know I can't put any work into it since I don't know if our solution has offically worked or not.  I won't know until the next spring when the rains arrive.

I walk around the yard and one thing becomes really clear -- our house was graded horribly.  There are parts where the ground visibly slopes back toward the house, allowing water to run toward the house.  One such area is the living room which lies right above the home theater room where all the flooding occured.  The landscaping is horrible, full of weeds, half-dead perennials, and uprooted plastic edging.  I tell my wife that I think we need to bring in dirt for that area and she gets an excited look in her eye.  By the next day, she has a huge plan for the whole new bed.


The old bed.  The ground slopes back toward the house.



Same bed, lots of ugly plants.

I took a week off in July from work.  Turns out, this would be the hottest week of the year.  I went through gallons of water each afternoon and gallons of beer each night and didn't urinate once.

The first step was cutting out about 150 sq ft of sod followed by digging out all the plants we wanted to save and splitting hostas from around the yard.  All the underground sprinklers had to get dug up and moved to their new positions.  Next, I brought in about 3 yards of dirt to mound against the side of the house to promote the proper grade to move water away from the house.

I extended the bed out about 8 feet and installed a new metal border.

Finally, I picked up a circular paver set from Menards and built it into the center of the new bed.

Finished bed.

North side of new bed.

The final result was a great success.  Now a year since installation, the plants have all doubled in size and are doing great in their new bed of nice black soil.