The Stepford Lawn, a Great Wind and Dealing with the Devil
After five months and four days, we have grass! And I'm not talking ganja (Jamaican lingo), Marijane or even medical marijuana. I'm talking REAL grass. As in we'll have to mow it eventually.
It's so very perfect I call it the Stepford Lawn. Nary a blade is out of place. I haven't even let our pom Celine do her duty on it yet.
Earlier I'd thought it was an accounting error when our general contractor Margie Tucker (Crown Construction) said we had enough left over in our budget for landscaping. We lept at the chance. On Friday a TruScape crew of about five Hispanic fellows arrived on scene along with two pallets of rolled-up grass, a truck of soil and another truck of barkdust.
The plan: To landscape the front of the house and level and barkdust the backyard. With a couple of mini-backhoes and a testosterone-heavy rototiller, they quickly minced both front and backyards, moved with ease boulders I could only have tripped over (there was an incident involving one and rotted applies...) and applied the numerous 60-pounds-apiece strips of grass. It took less than six hours--including their lunch.
Just before they spread the barkdust in the backyard I called in a change-order for more lawn instead of the cheap-ass-decision we'd made earlier to have only barkdust. So the backyard (for an additional $800) is pending. If we'd agreed to it upfront, it only would have been $500. Penny wise, pound foolish.
We're in the final stretch of our project, dealing with the final details such as trim painting and return visits from various professionals in response to a city inspector's review of plumbing, mechanical and electrical.
For example, Ian (prounounced EYE-on) our Ross Electric guy, returned today to place covers on a couple of now-non-used receptacles, change out a few breakers to brand-coordinate it (who knows what that inspector meant?) and put a cover on our LBT.
An LBT is a plastic boxy thing through which the power wires travel through to get to one's electical panel. Ours is apparently missing a cover. Apparently it has missed a cover for 15 years but suddenly it needs one. Ian had one in tow, but it had screw holes approximately 3/4-inch too far apart to work on our LBT.
He checked his supply truck, no luck. He even went to Home Depot, no luck. Tomorrow he'll check his work's warehouse and troubleshoot. All for the difference of less than an inch.
Wind storms pounded our new landscaping all weekend (the last two days) and continued today, but so far all but a bit of barkdust has held its ground, including the carport roof that always has flown off in past years about this time.
Our fir tree wasn't so lucky. Neither was our back fence. One of the posts we didn't replace earlier split off and two sections bowed precariously into our neighbor's yard.
Given the drying wind, Margie and Lori told me to water our new front lawn to help it root. It was after 4 p.m. already. It's freaking freezing outside. OK, so it was only 38, but there is a vicious wind chill. Not only that, but I had to FIND a sprinkler in the somewhat-less-than-organized old garage.
Electrician Ian, lying on the floor of the pantry replacing covers, made the appropriate sympathetic noises as I took on the mission. He also winced a bit when I returned to the house 15 minutes later, somewhat sprinkler-soaked.
The experienced Ian clearly recognized, however, my goal in helping the Stepford Lawn to thrive, whatever the cost. Whether it's an LBT cover that's 3/4 of an inch shorter or a four-inch hexagonal cover that's required vs. a three-inch one, it's a truism Ian is familiar with: The devil is in the details.