Goodbye Driveway (Continued)

A little update for ya. Back in June we wrote about tearing up our old partial driveway that had become quite an eyesore for the front yard. As a reminder here's what it looked like before.

Then we had a ton of dirt delivered and it looked like this. 

Then we laid some seed and it looked like this.

Then it started to look like this!

And now about 3 months later, a little extra seeding here and there & countless watering sessions we've made it to here!

So it's a bit splotchy and definitely a totally different shade of green?!? But it certainly beats a random 6' x 12' slab of concrete. We're hoping that with a little more time, and come spring time, similar grass treatments to both the new and existing areas things will begin to blend. Only time will tell...

Goodbye Driveway

So a couple weeks months ago we started working on tearing out the random patch of old driveway located in our front yard.




First we rented a demo hammer from Lowe's and ripped up as much of the concrete as I could before having to return the thing (only rented it for 4 hours). There was still some large pieces of concrete remaining but I was able to dig out about 3-4 inches throughout. Then we had the topsoil delivered...

And then it sat there. For like weeks. Yup we're probably big hits with the neighbors right about now. We would chip away a wheelbarrow here a wheelbarrow there taking it to other areas of the yard, but with the amount of rain we had in April and May it dragged on waaaay too long. But finally we reached the point where everything was leveled with the existing soil. We took the extra time to slope the patch just slightly to allow for drainage and broke up any large chunks using a shovel and rake.

We originally thought we would have sod delivered and take an easy approach to this ordeal. However we were a little skeptical if sod would survive being laid on only a few inches of topsoil with bits of concrete still remaining underneath the topsoil. With a little googling here and here we found out that seeding (especially with fescue type seeds) might be our best bet. We came across Scott's Patchmaster Sun and Shade which was a combination of grass seed (mostly fescues), fertilizer and mulch.

We bought the 15 lbs. bag from Lowe's for around $19 on sale. After applying the entire bag to our topsoiled patch it looked like this:

We watered once a day for about 30-45 minutes on the days that it didn't rain and 8 days later we're lookin' like this!

Although we're definitely not out of the woods yet, we're very relived to see some progress and some green! Lucky for us and our water bill, we're supposed to see rain everyday this week so we'll be keeping a close eye on it...and of course keep you posted.

So have you had any luck growing grass in or on some interesting areas? Or have any horror stories about grass seeding or sod? We'd love to hear it!

We grew grass!

Ok not the psychoactive drug, but just the regular backyard grass. So how thrilling huh? An entire post dedicated to growing grass! But we were actually pretty pumped. Being that this is our first spring as homeowners, we've never had to grow grass before and our green thumb track record is not too hot so we were a little worried.


For those who are still reading this, let me explain. We had this area under our big maple that looked pretty awful:

These pics were taken prior to the paver walkway we made and documented about here. As you can see it was lookin a little rough. Plus with the surplus of rain this spring the whole area quickly became a mudfest. And why those really big pavers were there we have no idea? So after completing the paver walkway we knew this was the next target.


We ran to Lowe's and spent some time comparing grass seeds. Talk about options! For such a basic concept there are a million different types! Again something we never knew about until becoming homeowners. Anyways we found this Scott's EZ Seed to be the right stuff for the area. 

The EZ Seed was great because when you water it the seeds turn dark brown. When the seeds turn light brown they're ready for more H20. This is extremely nice for newbies like us because you'll never over or under water as long as you can follow these simple instructions (hence the name "EZ").

We blocked the area (to avoid any dog traffic) with some metal stakes and rabbit fencing. The stakes were given to us from a neighbor & the fencing was purchased at Lowe's for something like $20 for 50'. It was roughly about 10 days when we finally saw tiny grass seedlings begin to poke through the soil & man were we elated!

Unfortunately we didn't capture any early photos so we'll just cut to the before & after...So rewind 10 days and we were looking something like this before....

And now the after:

Now for good measure, a picture before the DIY paver walkway and new grass. Before:

And after:

It's a start right? Now we gotta get back to the front yard and DIY raised garden beds...