Our yard is going to be huge

There is a long piece of pink flagging tape that has been tied to the chain-link fence behind our trees for as long as I've owned the house. I've never really thought anything of it. A week or two ago when we were trying to figure out how many of the trees are on our property, we used a tape measure extended along the fence between our house and Steve's to help us eyeball it, and it pointed right at the flagging tape, so apparently it was put there for that reason.

Today, Brooke was looking outside and said to me, "Is there more flagging tape out there than before?" I had a look and there was definitely now two long strips of flagging tape at that location.

We went out to have a closer look and discovered a line of stakes with flagging tape attached going across the back of our property. It starts out at the fence on the right-hand side, but on the left it is a good 20 or 25 feet beyond our fence.

Our fence is 35 feet from Sharon & Brian's fence to the original pink flagging tape, so doing the math (let's just pretend it's a right-angle triangle) means this new area is roughly 400 square feet. That means we're not adding 400 sf to our yard, we're adding 800. To our original 500 sf yard.

I'm so excited; it's like Christmas. We haven't actually heard back from the surveyor yet that the entire space he's marked is ours, but I can't imagine he would have marked something OTHER than the property line! Our neighbours are pretty excited too. They figured their property went a couple of feet past their fence, but this is enormous.

Update: I've added a photo of the space beyond the fence. It's a bit difficult to see (click on the picture to view it full-sized; use your back button to return to this post) but you can just see the chain-link fence at the left of the screen and is the left hand side of our property. The large tree at the right of the photo is on the "point" at the top of the sketch, above. So I guess we've found what we're going to do with the fill from removing our hill: use it to fill in the valley behind it!

Yard work & other outside changes

The company that paved our driveway did a great job. There were as many as six guys here at a time (they came and went as required) and I think it was something like 3 hours from start to finish. Most of the driveway butts up against solid surfaces (like the front of the house, paving stones, etc) but the right-hand side is off on its own, and it has a lovely beveled edge. I'm very pleased with how it turned out!

We had arranged with a "friend of a friend" who has done a lot of roofs to come and re-do our shingles. He came out to have a look a couple of months ago, but then got busy with other things. He came back a week or so ago to re-measure and have a good look at what needs to be done, and while he is still willing to do the work, he suggested we should get a roofing company to have a look and give us a quote as there is quite a lot more going on than he originally realized, such as the fact that some sections are spongy so it sounds like there is going to be more work required than just new shingles!

We've also begun a back-yard renovation. This is going to be great when it's done, but we're suddenly realizing it's not going to be as quick to do as we had hoped. Why not? Because we need a soil-removal permit. Which has a long list of requirements, and then a two-week (or so) wait once we submit the application. So much for getting it done within the next month! But we've already started, so we're going ahead with it one way or another!

Currently, we have a bit of a hill at the back of our yard atop which is a row of overgrown cedars. In front of that is a little bit of garden space (in raised beds) and then the main part of our yard is about 500 square feet, most of which is (was) a deck and the rest is primarily gravel.

Two weeks ago, Brooke demolished the deck and this week he demolished the fence and removed all of the landscaping ties around the raised gardens. We had all of that (mostly rotten) wood hauled away on the spot -- the first load was 2,800 pounds.

The next step is to bring in a company to remove the trees and the hill they are planted on, and level the entire yard. It will add about another 400 square feet of space! We're in the process of trying to find out from the Town whether the company will be permitted to access our yard via the road allowance behind us. If so it'll make it much simpler as they can just bring up the machines. If not, it'll probably mean hauling everything out to our road in wheelbarrows, adding days (if not weeks) to the amount of time it'll take, and exponentially increasing the cost. There's plenty of room in the road allowance, so we're very hopeful it'll be allowed.

Once the lot is level, we are going to build a noise-reducing fence (most likely one of the prefab cement ones that are designed to look like wood) and plant grass over the entire thing.

Then in a year or two we'll figure out where the best placement is for the various ideas we have: a new flower garden, possibly a vegetable/herb garden, a barbecuing area, a shed to store the gardening tools and bikes in, and perhaps a table. And whatever else we can think of between now and then. A wading pool! A swing set! A dog house! Who knows?