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A bit of a hiatus has been happening (or is it occurring?) on the lawn project, as you might have noticed. It’s been so windy and rainy lately (interspersed with fantastic days) that Tony the lawn man has got a bit behind. So our lovely patch of dirt has recently turned in to a luscious green field. Of weeds.

But Monday morning Tony arrived to give it all a bit of a spray. No pictures this time, sorry, as we had to just leave him to it and rush off to so some work. Hopefully we’ll be able to take lots of pics of the next stage to make up for it!

..is that it needs so many bloody connections for the speakers!

We’d very carefully added all the wires in the walls when playing cable monkey earlier, but there’d always been a bit of messiness where all the wires exited the walls and tried to make it to the stereo. Even harder when there’s extra wires for some outdoor speakers as well.

So while in the UK I managed to pick up a nice little unit to tidy that up. I’m trying very hard to forget just how much it cost me to pick it up. But at least I know that a) it was still a lot cheaper than I could get anything even remotely similar here for, and b) I know where there’s at least something that looks like a bit of gold to sell if the gold price keeps on rising!

It’s taken a few weeks to get around to installing it though. The thought of making bigger holes in the freshly painted walls took a bit of getting over. And a bit of organisation. We had to go to the local hardware store and try to get across the technical details of the tool that we needed to extend the Gib holes. Luckily the guy there knew exactly what we were trying to describe and took us right to it. Apparently they’re technically called a “wall board saw”. They’re a lethal looking thing. Imagine the most lethal diving knife you’ve seen, then double how lethal it looks and you might get close!

But luckily the wall and I both survived the surgery required to insert the new backing box and the main connection unit. And all the speakers still seem to work too. Success! Tick that job off the list. Still a few more to go…

After a very early start for me shovelling some of the AP20 into the entrance path while Tony levelled out the last of the drive, I finally got to sit back and watch the lawn area start to be more defined as he then started to rip it all up. The noticeable boundary between the old ground and the newly dumped dirt faded away into a freshly ploughed field.

He was done by lunchtime and tootled off. We won’t see him again for five weeks, while the soil all relaxes again, and all the weed seeds that have been disturbed have a good old sprout. Mind you, there are currently a huge number of birds out there having a good old munch on something or other that’s been dragged up. Hopefully it’s all the weed seeds. Or maybe grass grubs. But it seems like it’s definitely an early Christmas for them!

My job over the five week hiatus is to collect up all the stones that are over a fist size so the stone-burier can do its job and push the others down. It’s actually not as bad as I feared. Some areas are pretty clear already. Even Tony was surprised by how few boulders appeared.

We still need to finish off the entrance too (just a bit short of the AP20 in the end), but at least now there’s a path leading to the door that isn’t made of mud.

So all you visitors, park on the drive and come to the front door now.

And stay the hell off my lawn!

I guess I’ll have to find something else to keep you lot entertained now…

Ok, so technically there wasn’t actually anything to do with the new lawn area today, but we’ve reached a bit of a milestone. As of now there are no piles of anything around the place. We’re back to a flat(ish) base again! In fact we’re better then we’ve ever been, as with all the driveway and lawn levelling, along with the holes that the extra shingle filled in down the back, we’re now flatter than we’ve ever been, with even more usable land. (Now we just have to work out what to use it for…)

It’s a bit odd to walk around the house and not see anything sticking up and spoiling the views. But I’m sure we’ll get used to it!

And with perfect timing, as soon as Tony had finished dealing with the piles the AP20 arrived to go on the top of the drive which he could then level out. What’s AP20, I hear you ask? Apparently it stands for “All Passing 20mm”. I.e. a gravel and sand and clay type mix, but with nothing over 20mm long. I’m learning all sorts of stuff lately!

So he had a good ¾ of an hour to shove all that around to level it out. We’re still a few cubic meters short, but that should arrive tomorrow morning. Assuming it’s not raining Tony can then shove it all around, then we just have to get the roller back to give it a bit of a settling down. But the rain that’s currently persisting down will be helping with that. (By the by, why is it that it only rains here after I’ve got desperate and watered the most thirsty plants by hand?!)

The driveway’s a nice sideshow, but next on the lawn progress if for the whole lot to be ripped up then cultivated. Crossing fingers for that progress tomorrow!

Dawn finally arrived this morning, and once the toast and coffee had been gobbled down it was time to mount the roller and give the drive a bit of a going over. I was slightly apprehensive about how it would all go, not having driven anything like the roller before, but in the end it was pretty easy. But only once I’d been up and down the drive a couple of times. The first few trips up and down were pretty bumpy (especially with the vibrate function working overtime on the rough piles of gravel), making me wish that I’d left my breakfast to settle a bit more before setting out.

The most interesting and unexpected thing to me was watching the impact one big rock in the gravel had on the rolling for metres afterwards. It’s kind of like the impact that a rock has on the water of a river, but I really didn’t expect to see that sort of pattern in gravel and rocks. Other than that it was just a grind. Up and down, up and down…

But up and down, up and down, round and round, up and down I went for a few hours. Stopping only to let my stomach settle a bit, and to pull out some of the big stones and fill up some of the worst holes. I swear I’ve never reversed as much in my entire life as I did today! (Of course some of that is probably due to riding motorbikes rather than driving cars. Not much call for a reverse gear on a sports bike!)

But it did look enough fun for Bec to give it a go for a while too. I think she even enjoyed it. The grin suggests she did, at least.

On Monday we’re getting another layer spread on it of finer and firmer stuff. That’s going to need packing down too, so we’ll have to give it another blat with a roller sometime soon. But luckily we can’t do that quite yet, my kidneys need a chance to climb down from my ribs first.

After a bit of a break where Tony had to go off and do some stuff for much bigger clients than us (can’t blame him, and it didn’t worry us), the driveway got fully refilled with shingle this morning.

Tonight we’ve hopefully got a ride-on roller being dropped off so we can spend an few hours tomorrow morning going up and down, up and down it to pack it all down properly. I just hope I can learn how to drive it without hitting anything important. Like the house!

Today most of the gravel piles that have littered the landscape have been shuttled into piles in the driveway excavation. Most of them. Some of the others have been shifted down the back of the paddocks to fill in a bit of a depression or two. Good job we’ve got that hole to fill in, or I’ve no idea where else we’d put it. Anyone want any ungraded shingle?!

But now the whole area is pretty much back to being a flat piece of land again it looks bigger. We’ll have to work out what to put in it pretty soon. We’ve been kind of putting off making too many decisions before all the clearing was done so we could see what it looks like. Now we can we’re still at a loss!

Next stage is to flatten out all the driveway piles. Should be tomorrow, but it’s meant to be a bit nasty weather-wise. Then I’m going to have to hire a pedestrian roller and give it all a roll. What fun! For the first 10 minutes.

In other news, the plasterer and painter have finished up now, and the problem walls are looking a lot better than when we started. Hopefully good enough! We’ll see when they all dry properly and we get some sun back. So at least things inside can get back to normal, which will go down well with both us and the kitties.

This is possibly starting to remind you of the deck saga. It is for me! But at least this time we can see a huge change each day. In part 4, the rest of the area was cleaned up yesterday, including the spreading around of the huge mound of scrapings that we’ve been starting at from the first day of real work on the site when the foundation area was levelled out.

Unfortunately that mound was the kitties favourite place to play. And our source of soil to sieve for the vege gardens. I have no idea what any of us are going to do now, but we better find a replacement soon!

It’s really weird to stare out and not see it though. I get a small surprise every time I look up.

So basically all the lawn area has been levelled out, and focus shifts back to the driveway, where all the piles of shingle can be spread around. Assuming the weather stays nice, that’ll happen today. Stay tuned.

It’s been all go here today! Plasterer and painter, as well as the wardrobe guys installing a straight wardrobe, along with the continued driveway and lawn works. My main contribution to things was to keep the cups of tea flowing and to stir the simmering Pinto beans. (The beans were for us for tea, nothing to do with all the troops). And to keep the kitties settled. As much as I could with so much going on. They found it all a bit much and spent most of the day sitting on chairs under the dining table.

But stage one of the driveway project was completed about 3:30pm. The whole drive had been dug out, and all the piles of dirt transported to the “lawn”, which looked like it had been visited by some sort of giant mole or something!

Then the hideous eyesore of the back area got a quick clean-up, and is now looking almost flat and quite presentable. I need to get out and do some shovel work tomorrow to clean up the bits close to the house, but I’m quite happy to do that small chore when I’ve seen how fast all the other stuff gets carted around and evened out. The thought of trying to do that with shovel and wheelbarrow isn’t a good one!

By 6pm a large number of molehills had been flattened out and spread around, and a level area was appearing in the courtyard area. It’s made a huge difference already not to have the ground sloping away from the house.

Assuming it doesn’t rain tomorrow I wonder what progress will be made then!

A creeping brownness seems to be afflicting us. First all the lawn started turning brown – a good thing as it’s been sprayed and should be doing that! Then the “pasture” turned a bit brown here and there where having 3 days of snow crushing it was obviously just a bit too much for it. And now our deck has started to turn brown.

Unfortunately this isn’t happening naturally. There’s a bit of outdoor work involved, but as the weather has been so stunning we don’t care! We’ve started with the smallest bit to see if we really do like the colour. It seems to be fine so far. Otherwise we’ll have to work out just what you do with (almost) 10L of deck stain. But unless the colour looks horrible overnight, with the good weather scheduled to continue we’ll hopefully make a bit more of a dint in the pail tomorrow.