Yard Progression: Retaining Rock Wall

Next up in our Home Progression series: The yard! 

We've had some big things going on in our backyard over the past couple of weeks and we couldn't be more excited! As you may remember, our backyard has quite a steep slope from the house to the fence. In fact, the first time that we came and looked at this lot we immediately dismissed it as a "definitely no", which resulted in us almost building the same house in the Herriman Town Center (what were we thinking?). 

After our offer was turned down  we narrowly escaped, we came back to look at the lot again because we knew that this was the area that we ideally wanted to be in. (Again, what were we thinking - trying to live in Herriman? We seriously got sucked into the Herriman Town Center hype.) By the time we came back to look at it a second time, our neighbors yard had been tiered and we could picture what our yard would look like if we separated it into two tiers. We had completely fallen in love with the Cameron floor plan, so that brief vision was enough to decide to move forward with the house. (After spending hours and hours in the Herriman office/model home, I just walked into the office here in the Thanksgiving Meadows and told them that I wanted to put money down to hold the lot. They were so surprised! It's not often that someone walking in off the street with a small baby asks two questions and then puts money down to buy a house without ever really talking to you before.)

Ahem, I digress. So our yard: 

You can see how steep it is. It makes it look super small (I mean, it is a small yard but the slope makes most of the space unusable.) So, we knew what we had to do. After contacting 4-5 different landscaping companies for bids, we found Trotter Landscape and hired them to come an do our yard for us. First up, the retaining rock wall. They started by building a 2 foot wall at the end of our yard by the fence. This raised the yard by a good 2 feet, and made the upper wall shorter than it would have had to be otherwise. 

Lydia was in seventh heaven watching the big tractor guy out the window. We spent practially the whole day watching them work. It was amazing to see how skilled the man working the backhoe was. He could pick up the rocks and make them do exactly what he wanted them to do by pushing down on a corner and rotating them into place. It was amazing to watch. Our neighbors were kind enough to allow the machinery to come through their backyard (because the space between the houses is too small), but all day I was praying that the tractors would be very careful around their firepit. It's a beautiful and fun area that our neighbors built themselves and I was holding my breath everytime that anyone came near it. 

After they finished the lower wall, they filled and flattened out the lower level, then got started working on the upper wall. Again, it was incredible to see the skill of the guy who was placing the rock. It made me so grateful that we hired the job out and we didn't attempt to do it ourselves (we had talked about it). We never would have been able to do it. Never. 

Like I said, we spent most of the day looking out the window. Lydia was loving it. The lower wall is just one rock deep. The upper wall is three rocks deep. So the guy would lay the rocks down, back fill them with dirt, and then lay the next row.

I was absolutely amazed at how quickly they were finished. They arrived at around 8 a.m. and took about an hour to get unloaded and organized. They were long gone by 1 p.m. They were very quick, efficient, and did a fantastic job! Here are the after pictures: 

Just building the retaining wall seriously increased the usable space in our yard by 95%. It looks huge! (Well, as huge as such a small lot can look.) We are in love with it. Already we can picture fun family dinners at our picnic table on the patio while kids are running around in the lower area. It's going to be perfect. The upper level is just big enough for a couple of blankets on the grass, and the lower level is plenty of space to throw a football, play tag, run through sprinklers or pretty much anything else that our kids can come up with. The grass will slope on either side of the wall, so you can get down on either side. It already looks fantastic, but we can't wait to get grass in so that we can really get outside and enjoy it.