#248 In which our hero concludes his tale of backyard trouble, sort of.

It’s been more than a week since I last posted about the yard work. In that span, the job was completed. Well, sort of completed. And by “sort of” I mean “not even fucking close to being done.”

It makes me tired to even consider relating all the details, but basically, it went down like this: our contractor got to about this point in the project:



Then he told us that he was probably going to have to charge us more than he estimated. Mostly because it patio was a complete monster, and he hadn’t anticipated that. And we get it, The Scientist and I aren’t completely unsympathetic… the guy’s a small businessman trying to make a buck in an industry that probably cuts pretty close to the break-even point at the best of times.

But then it turns out that he wanted to charge us a LOT more than the estimate. And when he came calling for money the backyard wasn’t in much better shape than you see in the photo above. He explained that if you read the contract we signed, he agreed to spread enough topsoil to cover where the patio was, and where the sidewalk was. But, the problem is that he destroyed my entire backyard in the process of removing the patio. He spread about a 10x10’ section of topsoil, and apparently considered his work done. Which is bull-to-the-shit, of course.

Anyway, what it all boiled down to is if we wanted to go to war with this contractor… and the answer is no. The Scientist and I are both sick to death of all the water issues we’ve had with this house, and we don’t really have the time nor inclination to try to bully a contractor into half-assing another weekend worth of work on our property.

Soooo… that means that I need to go back there with rake and shovel and level out the dirt, then spread the remaining topsoil. Something I’m really not looking forward to. Not to mention grass seed, fertilizer, watering… ugh. Like I said, it makes me tired just thinking about it.

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