My next home improvement project - landscaping
There’s one simple truth about buying a fixer-upper – the home improvement fun just never ends.
That’s what my wife Karen and I are finding out now we have completed a renovation and two-story addition to hundred-year-old village colonial near Natick Center.
We just converted the construction loan we took out last fall into a permanent, 30-year mortgage, even managing to snag a low, 4.6 percent rate. Our debt load is now $412,000, a combination of the old mortgage and the $152,000 we financed for the project.
The low rates were a pleasant surprise – not a development I envisioned when we closed on our construction loan two weeks before the bottom fell out of the stock market last September.
I was questioning my sanity back then.
Anyway, the closing of the loan – and the completion of our addition - warranted lunch out and five minutes of celebrating.
When we bought out fixer-upper back in 2002, it was a glorified camp-ground shelter. The dingy, nicotine stained wallpaper dated to the 50s, the single toilet was in danger of falling into the basement, and the electrical system was so crude that all the lights in the house dimmed when I put the toaster on.
So now we have functional house. But the yard, or what’s left of it, is one big rock-strewn, ugly mess of a mud patch.
To put in our addition, our builder had to dig a new foundation. An already uneven yard became even more so, as it was crisscrossed by bulldozers and other heavy equipment.
Mixed in with the mud are hundreds of rocks, bricks from an old chimney as well, and glass from old bottles dating back to the early 1900s.
It’s not something to be fixed with a sprinkling of grass seeds and the garden hose – we need professional help.
To that end, we’ve are now choosing between two different landscapers.
Let’s just say any illusion I had that fixing the yard would be cheap is fast evaporating.
It’s easily going to cost another ten grand – and that’s just for starters. That will get junk carted away, some trees removed, the yard leveled and resoiled, and a patio built out back.
Of course, as we look around our battered yard, other possible projects come to mind.
There’s the ugly, concrete walkway, leading to an ugly concrete pad that we call our front porch, for one.
It’s wonderful the house looks great now. But all those imperfections in what could generally be called its curb appeal are that much clearer now.
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Pace yourselves, you just finished a major project. You obviously will want to make the yard safe by removing the glass etc. but you I am not sure that you can have it all. Why not do some back breaking work yourself to keep the costs down? Why does it all need to be done now?
Do your landscapers give you the option of doing pieces at a time? They should. Friends of mine paid a landscape architect come in and provide them a blue print to do all the things that they wanted to do to the yard, including fencing and addressing drainage issues. The architect gave them the complete plan and then additionally broke it down into a multi step project that included what items to address first, second, etc and what they could do themselves and what should be done by a professional. In that first year they were able to have a presentable yard even if it was not what they dreamed of and they did not put themselves into financial pit. The plan from the architect also gave them an estimated budget that they could use to help them save for the future parts of the plan so that while it would not be perfect gave them a slightly more realistic estimate for the low end of what it would cost. Slowly the yard is becoming what they dream of and they are proud of it because the didn't over leverage themselves and have been able to put some work into it themselves.
Bet you have radon.
If you have an eye for design,and some time to think things out, skip the architect. There are some good ones, but many just want the money. 10k for landscaping is quite reasonable. My family also bought a fixer-upper on a great lot with little landscaping. We need a new driveway, tree removal, retaining walls, and lots of re-elevating for our home to fix water draininage issues and ground contact with the siding, and we'll easily exceed 100k. You can do some work with your own back (I do whenever possible), but an excavator can do in 1 day what equates to 20 weekends of work with a handshovel, so be careful not to be "pennywize poundfoolish" with major landscaping projects.
We just finished our big landscaping project - tore out our entire front yard and put down fresh sod, plants, trees, etc, and put in a french drain. Re-leveled and graded by hand. The only "power" tool we used was the tiller - everything else was with shovels and elbow grease ;)
It took about 8 weekends worth of dedication but we saved SO much money over hiring it out. Plus it was nice to get outside and break a sweat. Your yard sounds bigger than mine so it sounds like you'll be best served by a bobcat rental (my husband briefly considered it but we dismissed the idea quickly) but there is such a substantial cost savings in doing it yourself.
Our landscapers gave us the option of doing pieces at a time.The architect came up with the complete plan and then additionally broke it down into a multi step project that included what items to address first, second, etc and what could we do and what should be done by a professional. In that first year we were able to have a presentable yard even if it was not what we dreamed of. The architect gave us an estimated budget which could help us to save for the future parts of the plan.We just finished our landscaping project Slowly the yard is becoming what we dreamed of.
Sounds like something to try and spread out as much as is possible... maybe you can do the clean-up yourselves slowly, pay for tree work & soil, do sod piecemeal, etc. I don't really know how it works.
One thing that I do know is if I were in your shoes is I'd choose to forego the patio, and do the front porch/steps instead.
I'm biased because I know our place would benefit so much more from that than anything else, but I'll bet that will make a bigger difference than a patio.
I love the do it your-selfers, but you had better know what you are doing. If you dig and tear things up too close to the trees you want to keep you can end up damaging or killing them. You have to be aware of engineering the work correctly or you can create water drainage problems that were not there before. Also be careful to purchase plants and trees from a good, established, local nursery who know what plants work in our climate. Buy your sod and mulch from a good, recommended company as well to avoid soil filled with rocks and clay and moldy mulch.
This blogger might want to review your comment before posting it.
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