Time to do some yard cleanup and make some changes.

During the move I had taken down the fence between the garage and the house.  This made it easier to get stuff into the back of the house and put the outdoor stuff close to where it will stay.  With intentions of turning the space between the garage and house into a parking area.  Parking on the street for three vehicles is all we have right now so this will give us more parking. Always better to have the vehicles off the road.

This area !  It’s 16 ft wide .. and I’m moving the fence back 8 ft into the yard.  This is what I’m currently working on..   One of the first jobs that we got done is the garden shed.

Tucked it nicely into the corner.  This strip will be gravel and a place to park the utility trailer. The problem here was the ground level.  It was up to and covering the vinyl siding.  That’s just inviting problems for the garage .  Notice the gas line on the far right. With the test gauge still there… it’s for the garage heater soon to be done.  But wait ! Before the gas line could be done under the deck needed to be cleaned up. The gas meter is there.

Cleaning up under the deck… What a mess !  Make way for the gas line to the garage . You can see the trench in the above photo.  It’s all done now and a load of gravel spread.  All done by hand.. no room for the tractor.

Great place to NEATLY store stuff like the kayaks.  This fence between the house and the neighbors needed to be replaced .  One post and most of the wood pickets were rotten. Now that’s done back to the the BIG job…  And this is how far I’ve got… to the end of August.

I have the new fence posts in the ground and the forms around them for a 16 inch wall. By digging down I was able to level the parking pad 16 ft out towards the street.  That’s a big level parking pad.

Here’s the concrete work all done.  A nice large step at the gate.  Plus a concrete apron for the double gate opening to the parking pad beside the garage.

Here’s a different view of the parking pad..  And shows better how I came 8 ft into the yard.  I have the metal for the fence now and I replaced the fence section on the north side of the deck.

Just over 5 ft high and never needs painting.  Just need a bit more gravel inside the fence and we are done. Back to the parking pad…

I’m working on getting the slope to the sidewalk just right.  The whole thing is 20 ft wide .. so it’s a double wide parking area.  With a path from the stairs.  I believe that pile is the last of the dirt and sod getting hauled away.  And after some tweaking I got the slope good.

Time for a truck load of the road mix.. And to spread it evenly..

Poof done !  Now we are looking at this and thinking the sand and gravel is kinda ..  dirty.  So we called the pavers.  And that means My part is done.  So I started on the fence.

And here we have most of it done …just the double gate needs to be built,  But I’ll wait till the pavement is done.   They came the next day.. and in 5 hrs we had a very nice new driveway.

The crew had only a little prep work to do cause I had done most of it.  The transition and slope is prefect.  We’ll give it a few days to set up before parking on it.  Meanwhile I have two more gates to build.

And there we have it.  The best gates I’ve made yet.  Six feet high and very little gaps.  They open out so I can better access the back yard.  And with that we are done .. The cats can use the yard and be safe.  Next is cleaning up and organizing the garage. Which has it’s own post…   Work on the garage