One of the books I read while I was in high school was Francis Bacon's Essays in which he describes the garden I would dream of.

Back to the reality, the house I purchased paying 7 figures had a backyard far from that dream. It was full of concrete with a swimming pull filled with dirt in the middle. Why would someone want concrete in their backyard? Maintenance, lifestyle etc.

We needed to do something about this.

Breaking the concrete

The first step was getting rid of the concrete. This is quite a labor intensive work. My initial exciting plan was drilling regular holes in the concrete and using a chemical that breaks the concrete overnight by expanding. Exciting in the sense that there is some science thus awesomeness involved. However, making that many holes with a drill (it has to be rotary hammer drill) and collecting those pieces is still a challenge that may not fit into my schedule. Also you need to bring a different dumpster (smaller and more expensive one) to get rid of the concrete.

While exercising these thoughts, as I was in the habit of mentioning next projects with any tradesman/contractor I work with, the tree trimming guy was interested in the project with quite lower price than the ones others gave me.

His way of doing this task involved using a mini bulldozer, quite some brute force and hauling away the debris. I was happy with the result. But still curious to see how that chemical expanding would do the job.

Sod installation vs seed

With the concrete removed the scene was not any better and we were not gonna be stuck with that. Soil beneath was possibly not good enough for seeding. How about irrigation system? Non-existed. Got couple quotes from contractors. Started evaluating those.

Squirrels

While getting to know the neighbors and sharing the next projects noticed that one of my new neighbors took the fight against the squirrels to the next level; a BB Gun. Well, that's quite violent and not a good example for my 5-year old son. That said, his lawn was totally destroyed by squirrels and moles.

Another neighbor had utilized a better option: a metal net under the lawn. That's what we asked from our contractor as well. It did not make much of a difference in the price. Squirrels' failed attempts to dig my lawn was quite a scene after all.

Irrigation system

Irrigation was the real reason I had to use a contractor. Adjusting pressure, preventing leaks etc were quite above my expertise. So wanted to use a specialist. The end result was a working result while the zone distribution was quite random.

Irrigation Controller

I asked the contractor to teach me how to set up the irrigation controller since the device was quite old and there is no documentation available online. It did not take me long to upgrade the irrigation controller to a smarter one. And there is quite good incentives for that in the form of convenience, water savings and rebates which I plan to discuss in another post.

Result

The result was a beautiful lawn all family and friends could enjoy walking, running on and looking at.

We even threw a birthday party and got some petting animals on it. They looked quite happy as well :)