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sarea
I thought I wrote about this but I guess I didn't. I think I feel this way because I have talked about it sooooo much in person and in email, lol.
So, as usual, my backyard looks like shit. My front yard looks better, but not great. You guys, I hate lawn maintenance. I hate it so much. Like, it is totally the worst part of home ownership, having to deal with it. If it were just the lawn itself, then fine, whatever. It's a pain but I can deal. But it turns out, there's soooo much more. Stuff has to be pruned every season! Cracks in your driveway can start to grow stuff! It's hard to mow edges! Weeds and unwanted things grow everywhere! A big windstorm can make your lovely lavender plant go sideways and you can't pull it straight again! Etc.
From the moment I bought the house, I had plans to do something with the backyard. But of course, the first year or so, it wasn't too bad, because the previous owners took at least some care with it, and that gave me some procrastination space. Now, it's just a mess. I don't even want to face mowing it (even though the weeds/grass are so long my dog can't even get through it to do his business). Plus, my front lawn is getting very patchy and brown, so I'm afraid of getting another notice from my homeowner's association. SIGH. Anyway, all of this came to a head and I finally stopped procrastinating about getting some work done. I found a highly rated landscaping company on Yelp, and they got back to me after a few days.
Keith, the guy who owns the company, said that it was a very busy time for them, so it would cost $100 to do the estimate, which would go toward the final cost if I ended up doing a project, and that estimates were only on Mondays and Tuesdays. Because of the way things are around these parts, I was not really surprised by this response. Handymen, construction crews, landscapers, they all get plenty of work so it's more about people fighting over THEM than the other way around. I agreed to his terms, because frankly, I was probably going to hire him based on his reviews alone (I'm really not the sort of person who gets multiple bids. If the first person I call out gives a rate that's in line with what I'm expecting, and they seem competent, and they have good reviews, I'm not going to waste any time).
So he came out, and one of the first things he mentioned was that he was the one who did the overhaul on my neighbor's yard! LOL. So that right away made me feel more at ease, that someone in the neighborhood had already used him (and in fact, they have his crew come every week for maintenance). We went through the stuff I wanted done, and the estimate was on the high side of what I was expecting, but I decided I wanted the work done. He had availability in mid-June, but in the meanwhile I was to call another company to get my front lawn reseeded. This is what we agreed Keith would do:
1) Do general cleanup of the front yard.
2) Open up the backyard fence and install a more open one, similar to what he did for my neighbor (but I asked that it not look EXACTLY the same).
3) Re-level the backyard for better drainage.
4) Replace the entire backyard lawn with more of a landscaped look/feel, with bark/large rocks/plants/trees.
5) Replace the current pathway of pea gravel and walking stones with a more sturdy type of gravel.
6) Leave space for a grill area.
7) Remove extraneous trash/equipment, such as the fireplace/brick structure the previous owner had up against the fence.
He estimated that the project would take a full week, and I would pay for their time and labor, but any plants and such I would pay for at cost. After he left, I realized why I felt a bit uneasy... it was because it was for a significant amount of money, but he had not mentioned a contract. I was surprised by this, because one would protect both him and me, you know? My main concern was having the project run over. It was already on the high end of what I was wanting to spend, and I didn't want it to turn into this never-ending ordeal. So I wrote him an email going over everything, and he said he would call me. On the call he explained that he wasn't from around here, and that where he was from, they strongly believed in doing what they said they'd do and vice versa. He didn't want to work with people that wouldn't trust him or vice versa. And like... that's nice and all, but we AREN'T where you're from? We're here? And a contract protects us BOTH? Being the daughter of a lawyer, it's hard to let go of the alarm bells that go off when someone's like, you should just trust me. At the same time, his online reviews are stellar, I don't necessarily want to let a great landscaper get away, and my neighbor trusts him enough to have him regularly come out to do work on their property. I want to just trust him, but at the same time, I feel like, but if something does go wrong with this particular project, even if allllll the projects before this went fine, what happens?
jade_okelani shared my uneasiness, so she suggested I talk to my neighbor about their experience with him. (Talk to my neighbor?! What a concept!) She also allowed that the fact he was asking for 1/3 of the cost up front was better than her experience, which is that usually half is asked for up front.
The Golden Rule was the company that came out to reseed my front lawn, which they were supposed to do on Thursday but didn't get out to doing until Saturday (after oppa outing #6). I had my garage door open as I was reprogramming my sprinklers, so I noticed when my neighbor happened to come home from an errand. I accosted him to ask about Keith, and he was immediately understanding of my predicament, as he had gone through the same thing! He didn't like that there wasn't a written estimate or contract, but his wife wanted to just go through with it. He mentioned that while the estimates Keith gave were always rather high, he always tried to come under, and he and his team were total pros who did great work and tried to help you out wherever they could. At some point his wife came outside also (wondering what was taking him so long), and we all got to chatting, and it turns out we all work at the same company! LOL! Well, apparently the husband doesn't anymore, but she still does, and I even know (of) her boss! Also, in another bit of coincidence, I said that I was originally from LA, and they said they had moved here from Irvine! It now explained why we had been neighbors for over two years but had never exchanged a word, lol. People from LA are totally nice and friendly once you get to know us, but we're not like aggressively friendly to strangers (which people in the PNW are... in a good way). Getting to know people from the PNW beyond that initial kindness, however, is tough... whereas people from LA are the opposite. That's what my friend J. has always said, and I tend to think she's right.
Anyway, after that conversation, I felt a LOT better about going forward with the yard work. I am not thrilled about the lack of a contract, and would prefer that there be one (my dad would be apoplectic if he knew), but I think I shall trust in my fellow human beings and hope for the best. I really, really, REALLY hope I do not regret this. :/
But now I'm totally looking forward to a redone yard, and especially about having a nice place to hang out and grill. In fact, I am SO excited about having a BBQ party that I impulsively bought a grill! I have always wanted one... it seems like one of the hallmarks of being an adult, and I love eating grilled meat. Anyway, when I lived in my condo I had a small hibachi, but I never used it when I lived in my previous house.
After talking to my boss, and doing some research, I decided that I wanted a charcoal grill over a gas one. The latter would be way more convenient, of course, but it would basically be like having an outdoor stove. It would provide none of the BBQ flavor that I love, and which, to me, would be the point of having a grill. (Otherwise, I could just cook the food inside and eat outside.) Yes, dealing with coal and lighting it and waiting for it to get hot is a total pain -- but I likely wouldn't be doing it THAT often, and it would be worth it on those occasions for the food to taste how I want.
And I think I have found the perfect compromise solution. I ended up buying the Weber Performer Deluxe (I got it from Crate and Barrel for their exclusive blue color. No one had pink or even red, or I would have gotten that!), which has a gas ignition system for the coals, meaning the coals get lit without any fuss (I hated having to use a bunch of lighter fluid to get them going). The grill has amazing reviews out the wazoo, so I'm hoping, like with my landscaper, that I don't get to be the ONE person who has less-than-amazing results.
That said, I already ran into some trouble putting the thing together. I don't know if it's because I had to have C&B remove all the parts from the box in order for me to be able to fit the grill in my car/transport it, or whether it was just missing to begin with, but I had to stop partway through assembly because I couldn't find the retaining clip. I was like, how important could this little thing be? Maybe the grill will still be functional without it... But there's a warning in the instructions (and in the vids I watched) that you absolutely should not operate the grill without it until you want to RISK DEATH. So, yeah. Impressively, Weber had someone working the phones on Memorial Day (when I was putting it together), so I was able to register the grill and get a replacement part sent out. But it was frustrating, because I actually had the time and availability and WILL to put this thing together, and now that's been derailed. I hope I can pick up where I left off without too much fanfare/frustration! And that in the meanwhile I haven't lost track of OTHER parts! Sigh.
Come late July, whenjade_okelani is supposed to be in town, in THEORY I should have a beautiful new backyard and an awesome new grill set up. FINGERS CROSSED.
So, as usual, my backyard looks like shit. My front yard looks better, but not great. You guys, I hate lawn maintenance. I hate it so much. Like, it is totally the worst part of home ownership, having to deal with it. If it were just the lawn itself, then fine, whatever. It's a pain but I can deal. But it turns out, there's soooo much more. Stuff has to be pruned every season! Cracks in your driveway can start to grow stuff! It's hard to mow edges! Weeds and unwanted things grow everywhere! A big windstorm can make your lovely lavender plant go sideways and you can't pull it straight again! Etc.
From the moment I bought the house, I had plans to do something with the backyard. But of course, the first year or so, it wasn't too bad, because the previous owners took at least some care with it, and that gave me some procrastination space. Now, it's just a mess. I don't even want to face mowing it (even though the weeds/grass are so long my dog can't even get through it to do his business). Plus, my front lawn is getting very patchy and brown, so I'm afraid of getting another notice from my homeowner's association. SIGH. Anyway, all of this came to a head and I finally stopped procrastinating about getting some work done. I found a highly rated landscaping company on Yelp, and they got back to me after a few days.
Keith, the guy who owns the company, said that it was a very busy time for them, so it would cost $100 to do the estimate, which would go toward the final cost if I ended up doing a project, and that estimates were only on Mondays and Tuesdays. Because of the way things are around these parts, I was not really surprised by this response. Handymen, construction crews, landscapers, they all get plenty of work so it's more about people fighting over THEM than the other way around. I agreed to his terms, because frankly, I was probably going to hire him based on his reviews alone (I'm really not the sort of person who gets multiple bids. If the first person I call out gives a rate that's in line with what I'm expecting, and they seem competent, and they have good reviews, I'm not going to waste any time).
So he came out, and one of the first things he mentioned was that he was the one who did the overhaul on my neighbor's yard! LOL. So that right away made me feel more at ease, that someone in the neighborhood had already used him (and in fact, they have his crew come every week for maintenance). We went through the stuff I wanted done, and the estimate was on the high side of what I was expecting, but I decided I wanted the work done. He had availability in mid-June, but in the meanwhile I was to call another company to get my front lawn reseeded. This is what we agreed Keith would do:
1) Do general cleanup of the front yard.
2) Open up the backyard fence and install a more open one, similar to what he did for my neighbor (but I asked that it not look EXACTLY the same).
3) Re-level the backyard for better drainage.
4) Replace the entire backyard lawn with more of a landscaped look/feel, with bark/large rocks/plants/trees.
5) Replace the current pathway of pea gravel and walking stones with a more sturdy type of gravel.
6) Leave space for a grill area.
7) Remove extraneous trash/equipment, such as the fireplace/brick structure the previous owner had up against the fence.
He estimated that the project would take a full week, and I would pay for their time and labor, but any plants and such I would pay for at cost. After he left, I realized why I felt a bit uneasy... it was because it was for a significant amount of money, but he had not mentioned a contract. I was surprised by this, because one would protect both him and me, you know? My main concern was having the project run over. It was already on the high end of what I was wanting to spend, and I didn't want it to turn into this never-ending ordeal. So I wrote him an email going over everything, and he said he would call me. On the call he explained that he wasn't from around here, and that where he was from, they strongly believed in doing what they said they'd do and vice versa. He didn't want to work with people that wouldn't trust him or vice versa. And like... that's nice and all, but we AREN'T where you're from? We're here? And a contract protects us BOTH? Being the daughter of a lawyer, it's hard to let go of the alarm bells that go off when someone's like, you should just trust me. At the same time, his online reviews are stellar, I don't necessarily want to let a great landscaper get away, and my neighbor trusts him enough to have him regularly come out to do work on their property. I want to just trust him, but at the same time, I feel like, but if something does go wrong with this particular project, even if allllll the projects before this went fine, what happens?
jade_okelani shared my uneasiness, so she suggested I talk to my neighbor about their experience with him. (Talk to my neighbor?! What a concept!) She also allowed that the fact he was asking for 1/3 of the cost up front was better than her experience, which is that usually half is asked for up front.The Golden Rule was the company that came out to reseed my front lawn, which they were supposed to do on Thursday but didn't get out to doing until Saturday (after oppa outing #6). I had my garage door open as I was reprogramming my sprinklers, so I noticed when my neighbor happened to come home from an errand. I accosted him to ask about Keith, and he was immediately understanding of my predicament, as he had gone through the same thing! He didn't like that there wasn't a written estimate or contract, but his wife wanted to just go through with it. He mentioned that while the estimates Keith gave were always rather high, he always tried to come under, and he and his team were total pros who did great work and tried to help you out wherever they could. At some point his wife came outside also (wondering what was taking him so long), and we all got to chatting, and it turns out we all work at the same company! LOL! Well, apparently the husband doesn't anymore, but she still does, and I even know (of) her boss! Also, in another bit of coincidence, I said that I was originally from LA, and they said they had moved here from Irvine! It now explained why we had been neighbors for over two years but had never exchanged a word, lol. People from LA are totally nice and friendly once you get to know us, but we're not like aggressively friendly to strangers (which people in the PNW are... in a good way). Getting to know people from the PNW beyond that initial kindness, however, is tough... whereas people from LA are the opposite. That's what my friend J. has always said, and I tend to think she's right.
Anyway, after that conversation, I felt a LOT better about going forward with the yard work. I am not thrilled about the lack of a contract, and would prefer that there be one (my dad would be apoplectic if he knew), but I think I shall trust in my fellow human beings and hope for the best. I really, really, REALLY hope I do not regret this. :/
But now I'm totally looking forward to a redone yard, and especially about having a nice place to hang out and grill. In fact, I am SO excited about having a BBQ party that I impulsively bought a grill! I have always wanted one... it seems like one of the hallmarks of being an adult, and I love eating grilled meat. Anyway, when I lived in my condo I had a small hibachi, but I never used it when I lived in my previous house.
After talking to my boss, and doing some research, I decided that I wanted a charcoal grill over a gas one. The latter would be way more convenient, of course, but it would basically be like having an outdoor stove. It would provide none of the BBQ flavor that I love, and which, to me, would be the point of having a grill. (Otherwise, I could just cook the food inside and eat outside.) Yes, dealing with coal and lighting it and waiting for it to get hot is a total pain -- but I likely wouldn't be doing it THAT often, and it would be worth it on those occasions for the food to taste how I want.
And I think I have found the perfect compromise solution. I ended up buying the Weber Performer Deluxe (I got it from Crate and Barrel for their exclusive blue color. No one had pink or even red, or I would have gotten that!), which has a gas ignition system for the coals, meaning the coals get lit without any fuss (I hated having to use a bunch of lighter fluid to get them going). The grill has amazing reviews out the wazoo, so I'm hoping, like with my landscaper, that I don't get to be the ONE person who has less-than-amazing results.
That said, I already ran into some trouble putting the thing together. I don't know if it's because I had to have C&B remove all the parts from the box in order for me to be able to fit the grill in my car/transport it, or whether it was just missing to begin with, but I had to stop partway through assembly because I couldn't find the retaining clip. I was like, how important could this little thing be? Maybe the grill will still be functional without it... But there's a warning in the instructions (and in the vids I watched) that you absolutely should not operate the grill without it until you want to RISK DEATH. So, yeah. Impressively, Weber had someone working the phones on Memorial Day (when I was putting it together), so I was able to register the grill and get a replacement part sent out. But it was frustrating, because I actually had the time and availability and WILL to put this thing together, and now that's been derailed. I hope I can pick up where I left off without too much fanfare/frustration! And that in the meanwhile I haven't lost track of OTHER parts! Sigh.
Come late July, when
jade_okelani is supposed to be in town, in THEORY I should have a beautiful new backyard and an awesome new grill set up. FINGERS CROSSED.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-31 02:15 pm (UTC)(Granted, I also live in an area where if someone doesn't do the job, it's very easy to ruin their business with just a few words to the right Older Ladies at the Garden Club.)