That Saturday morning we were there when the gates opened. It took three trips to get rid of all our stumps- we became fast friends with the staff who were manning the machinery to unload everything. I love Seattle- friendly people who love to recycle. The event was free, but HopeLink was there accepting donations. We were happy to help such a great, local cause.
Once the truck was cleared out, we spent the next few night hauling all the rest of the tree debris out. It was a lot of work, probably the hardest part of the whole yard. Greg's dad came over and took almost all of the wood to burn this winter in their wood-stove. Greg also snuck a few pieces for us to use on camping adventures this summer :)
With all the mess out of there, we headed back down to Eastside Rentals to pick up a mini-excavator, yard roller, and landscaper's rake. Leveling everything was surprisingly easy with the heavy equipment. Greg was once again in his element- Boys+Machines+Dirt=Love.
He primarily used the leveling piece on the front of the mini (right in front of the trax) to drag dirt back and forth until it was smooth. We had a few hilly areas that we dug out further. After 2 or 3 hours we were looking at a FLAT dirt pile.
At this point we went back to manual labor. I had done plenty of reading (and video watching like this) which reccomended using a roller to help compress the dirt and work out smaller imperfections. I was to busy
Its reccomended that you let the dirt sit to allow for any settling- so we gave it three full days (of rain) to do its thing. While the dirt was chilling, we were busy doing our prep work.
We'd asked around and heard that J B Instant Lawn is the go to for grass around here. Although they carry JBIL seed at Home Depot, I opted to support them directly and headed over to their little shop near Woodinville. They were very helpful in getting me set up with seed, Lyme, and starter fertilizer. All in all it ran me 130 bucks to get enough to cover 4,000 feet. We were planning on using their sun/shade blend (recommended 5 hours of sun daily) but I made a last minute call and opted for the dense shade blend (recommended 3 hours of sun daily). Our yard gets sun, but not a lot all at once.
The night we did the seed was a long one. We started by raking everything and getting any last surface rocks out of there.
Then Greg went to town with his fertilizer spreader: first lyme, then fertilizer, then seed.
Similar to our approach with rolling- he applied it front to back, and then side to side for an thorough, even application.
All-in-all it took us about 4 hours to do all the seeding. A long night but sooo worth it. To celebrate we had a late night date to Home Depot to buy our first sprinklers!
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