And on to the back yard.
The plan was to put in a 6x12 shed with a nice wide (and flat) driveway behind the shed.
So first up was the shed pad. We'd been going all of 20 minutes when this big old stump raised it's head, but the little 1 tonne chinese digger ripped into it, no sweat.
To get the shed pad big enough we needed to rob a fair bit more dirt from the top bank then I had planned.
So in with another 12 tonnes of rock, this time I ordered what was supposed to be 300mm pitching rocks, but I recon half the load were a good 600mm and I had to get a bit creative to move them around.
The wife and I laid this 22m long wall on our own, by hand, in March (read that as sweating our a** off).
With that unplanned bit of extra manual labor out of the way, it was on with the real job.
For that we needed.... you guessed it... another 24 tonnes of rock.
And there was some big suckers in these loads, we had the 3 tonne bobcat wheel standing with one that was basically 1m cubed.
Shed pad formed up and ready to pour.
Now the wife and I built this shed 100% on our own, just the 2 of us.
If you ever want to test a marriage, build a shed together...
I'm happy to say we made it though this one and now when we're having a glass of wine or a beer together out there in the afternoons the drinks are even sweeter.
We're in the process of making our outdoor kitchen and entertaining area between the shed and the house.
It's only early stages now, but the concept is there.
To finish off the lower driveway I needed to put in a retaining wall along the bank behind the shed, but I was getting a bit tired of playing with rocks, so went with timber on this one.
Nice rainbow colours out of the footings.
This bank is mostly clay over sandstone (as you can see by the colours above), in the wetter months water leaches out of the toe on this bank.
So I thought I'd take advantage of nature and pull that water down into some garden beds.
I thought 350mm X 350mm trenches with agg pipe and filled with 40-50mm stones should do the trick. The agg pipe is coiled inside each bed and topped with stone before filled up with our garden soil we've been building for a few years.
Now we've gone from this.
To this.
And to finish it all off, I pulled in a new top driveway so now I can drive straight though front to back.
As with everything on our block, it wasn't so simple, but we're really happy with how it came up in the end.
Now that I've sorted all my photos on my hard drive, I guess I'd better get started on doing my trailer build thread here soon too......
