Digging it

Spent most of the day doing back and forth from Home Depot today. Went this morning to get a new mower blade when I hit a metal stake on the side of the grass and bent the blade. Ended up forgetting the blade the first trip and went back after lunch.

I installed the blade when I got back and started up the mower and instantly know something wasn't right. The mower was vibrating around like crazy like the blade was out of balance. I checked everything out and identified that the drive shaft of the mower got messed up along with the blade. So a new mower is in my immediate future. Probably after I drop of the load of dirt tomorrow morning.

To give me something to do while processing the lawn mower, I pulled the spindles off the rail outside the living room. I gave me some stakes to use for leveling out the patio area where the deck used to be.



The dirt is from the area out where the deck used to be. It is quite uneven and is higher than the dirt by the foundation, which is not good. So I set up the laser level and some stakes, marked a level mark on each stake and identified how far down I would need to go from that mark to get below the crawlspace vents and the dirt at the foundation. It ended up being about 5 inches out at the middle of the deck area by the hot tub.



So I have about a 8x8 foot area outside the back door down to the right grade and will be building a small wood step/platform to put outside the door so it isn't such a large step down. Then I will continue digging out the rest of the area out to the grass and hopefully get a load of wood chips down before the end of the day... so it isn't just open dirt. Although mud shouldn't be an issue for a little while, if you believe the weatherman.

Oh and I got a nasty blister that ripped open while digging... that will be fun tomorrow.