New Yard

This post is a little late, almost 1 year! But last year we put a lot of time and money into our yard. We were tired of finding broken sprinkler lines and our grass was overrun with weeds, not to mention full of holes and such which created a hazard for walking.
The route taken was the long, hard route. But at the beginning of summer we had a new yard that was beautiful and made us proud.
John started by killing all the grass the fall prior. Unfortunately the grass began to grow back in the spring! We should have just left it alone because the plan was to till it all in and the dead grass would be weed free and would make for a good ground fertilizer for the new lawn. Then we were told that we should cut the sod with a sod cutter and dig it up because we would break all the sprinkler lines with the tiller. So John rented a sod cutter and attempted to cut the lawn out. There was one problem - the lawn was dead so it did not cut right. After spending many hours trying to get the old lawn up John decided he needed to rent a bobcat tractor to dig it all up. This process worked great but the bobcat was very heavy and John made lots of ruts in the ground, thus tearing up the yard even more. Luckily we had lots of help from family who came to our rescue and helped gather the lawn, throw it in the back of a flatbed trailer, and haul it off to the dump.
We knew we needed to hire someone to put the sprinkler system in. John could have done it, but he really didn't know how and after years of frustration patching the system, he felt it would be worth the money to hire a professional. We are sure glad we did. The crew did a fantastic job putting a state of the art system in the yard and they brought in new dirt and leveled the ground. The yard was so pretty between the leveling and the sod John was seriously considering leaving the dirt as it was! OK, not really but it did look nice.
Before the sod was put in, John installed some really nice metal edging for the flower beds.

We then called upon family and neighbors to come install the sod. It is amazing how fast sod can be installed with 10+ guys! The lawn got in and we were off to our new yard!
Shortly thereafter, John purchased and setup a Lifetime shed that Ted helped us get for a fantastic price. We are really happy to have that extra space to alleviate the garage of storage duties as well as get chemicals locked up and away from the children. With the new Yukon it was impossible to get the lawn mower in and out of the garage without pulling the car out of the garage. Now it was nicely stowed in the back yard where it belongs. Our more accessible, less cluttered garage thanked us for it!
We are very happy with the yard and look forward to many fun years playing in the yard.