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You haven't heard much from me lately because I haven't been doing any house projects. I got a little burnt out a couple years ago (when I finally gave-in and paid someone to finish painting the dining room). Since then I've been spending my free time doing other techie stuff, not related to the house.
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I started by taking a week off work for Spring Break, which involved 9-straight days of back-breaking work to get the yard tilled and the patio laid. I ended up taking about 10 yards of topsoil out of the back yard, one wheelbarrow at a time!
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Then I spend another few weeks breaking up the concrete footings from the old deck and leveling the yard out (there was about a 4" crown of dirt covering most of the yard). I could tell when I got back to level because I found about 5 ancient sprinkler heads from the original sprinkler system that were buried by 4" of dirt).
Yesterday was the icing on the cake; it took me a whole two hours to lay all of the sod and have an insta-lawn! Tonight was our first dinner on the patio, and it was fantastic!