The very first project we jumped into after getting back from our honeymoon was regrading the front yard. Last year we had a mini basement flood after 3-4 days of hard rain. I say “mini” because it wasn’t like the whole place was flooded but our carpet in one corner of the basement were thoroughly soaked and we had standing water under it. So as much as that sucked we were able to identify where the issue was coming from. Gotta drink a beer when this stuff happens right!!
Ultimately our front walk way pavers were about and inch below the patio and on a slope towards where the interior stairs are so when it rained all the water was running to that point in the foundation and finding its way in. The previous owner had installed an underground drainage system because they had flooding before but when water is pouring against your foundation it will get in eventually. So when we talked about doing some new landscaping out front we knew that it was also time to re-grade the front elevation of the house. Here’s a shot of what everything looked like when we moved in.
SAMSUNG
We didn’t really like the large tree/shrub by the entrance of the house and it made it annoying to get to the hose behind it so we decided to move it to the far corner of the house. Here is the removal of it, a small azalea bush we put along the right side of the house, and also the pavers we pulled up.
Here we are making room for it by moving the rhododendron in few feet from the corner.
And here they both are 3 months later still surviving the transplants!
Now I don’t have a picture of it but imagine an entire truck load of fill dirt in Mace’s truck. Now imagine us shoveling 90% of it (the other 10% we gave to our neighbor) against the base of our house behind the bushes and around the walkway (luckily I was able to convince Mace we didn’t need to pull up the huge shrubs to do this) and then tamping it down till it was compact, all the while making sure that it gently sloped away from the house in all directions. Yes Mace was out there with his level to ensure there was enough slope away from the house towards the front and the side. It actually wasn’t as painful as I’m making it sound but there was still a solid amount of time spent doing this. And when we were all done we could finally lay the pavers back down!! Nice and flush with the front porch.
However after those first 3 went back down it became glaringly obviously how out of whack all the other pavers were so we re-laid all of them so that the spacing was even and they were all level (again sounds pain staking but didn’t take that long). It annoyed me at the time but it was the right thing to do and really does make for a much nicer entrance to our home (point for Mace!)
We also decided to pick up some new pavers to make a path to the garage side door we put in. To do this we also had to move the smaller shrub in the front bed over a few feet b/c it used to be where the pavers were.
Is it sad that during the first hard rain this spring we were both excited to see if our regarding efforts were working?!? Here’s a shot that shows how any rain puddles are away from the house’s foundation, yay!! And our basement has been bone dry every since, which is great for when we decide to re-do the carpet down there in a few years!
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