When we moved into our house I was so excited to have beautiful flower beds all around the house. As the years have gone by, however, I have become less and less enthused about all the work that goes into these flower beds. One major issue is that they are not level so when we water all the good topsoil get pushed out into the grass. What is now left is hard Utah clay. Which we have learned is near impossible to plant and weed. We have debated just replacing the topsoil, but within just a few years we would end up with the same problem again.
Anyway, last year we began to notice that the window well was beginning to rust and fall apart. The only way to replace it was to dig the whole thing out and I would have to rip out a good part of the flower bed to do it. So it seemed like a perfect time to pull everything out and start completely over.
It has been a lot of hard work, but I think it will be worth it in the end.
BEFORE
DAY 1
Let the work begin. We pulled out everything except my rose bushes on the side of the house.
We even got rid of the concrete barriers.
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| The old window well. You can see how rusted it was, and was falling apart all the way to the bottom. |
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Day 1 ended with an injury. Earlier in the evening Jake knocked off the dryer vent cover. Jared told him to just leave it off since it would probably get knocked off again. Later as Jared was digging and loosening dirt around the window well, he hit his hand on the metal dryer tube. He sliced up his knuckle. We ended up in the instacare, and 5 stitches later Jared's hand was sewn back together. Even though is was a bummer to end up in the instacare, we felt grateful that Jared didn't sever the tendon in his hand. Apparently he came very close. The dr. could see the tendon when he cleaned it all out. If that had happened, Jared would have had to have surgery to fix it. Whew! So glad that didn't happen. (I did have a picture of his stitches, but decided not to post it. Not everyone like to see that kind of thing.)
DAY 2
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| Out comes the old window well |
What happy helpers
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| In goes the new window well. |
Now we can start putting in the new flower beds. We are edging the new beds with decorative stones. They will be terraced into 2 levels. This will decrease the amount of soil we lose when we water.
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| Jamie and Janice worked very hard to make sure the stones were level. |
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| The two levels complete and ready for dirt. |
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DAY 3
Day 3 involved changing out sprinklers, adding dirt and finally flowers.
