So remember when I told you beginning of last week about how excited we were to get started on our backyard DIY project? Do you also remember that request for everyone to pray for no rain? Well apparently you guys didn’t pray hard enough, haha! Oh well, rain turned out to be the least of our worries.
What a mess! But what are you going to do? Thankfully Josh had checked the weather in advance and pulled a bunch of the dirt into a pile to cover with a plastic sheet.
Thursday night the stone arrived and Friday we rented a Bobcat for the weekend (much to my chagrin we even skipped a FREE Zac Brown concert Friday night so we could get everything ready to go Saturday). We were ready to work!
We were up bright and early Saturday morning and all my husband’s sweet family (I mean his parents, brother, and even our adorable 3 year old nephew) were there by 8am to help us work!
I heard the Bobcat start up as I was making the bed and moments later joined them outside to work. The only problem? When I came outside I discovered them all standing on the bank with the tractor on it’s side staring at the project. I thought nothing of it until my brother-in-law said to me, “we’ve got a prediment.” Turns out they had started the Bobcat, moved a load of the dry dirt over the rainy wet mud to try to dry the mud up, and that’s when the Bobcat had broken. When I say the Bobcat had broken I mean the belt broke. BAD NEWS.
Not only was the Bobcat totally broken and unusable but it was stuck on it’s side right in the middle of our project. Of course the place we had rented the Bobcat from was closed and every other rent shop within a two hour drive had already rented their Bobcat out for the weekend. We did end up finding an after hours emergency number we called only to wait over two hours for a mechanic to show up and tell us that the belt was broken and there was nothing that could be done until Monday.
There was nothing that could be done…our family went home since we couldn’t work and that was that. The worst part? We won’t be able to work again for three more weeks since we will be on vacation this weekend and the next and can only rent the Bobcat on a weekend since we both work full-time. Ah. Ah. Ah.
Even worse news? Now we are having to deal with fighting the HOA on fining us for leaving the stone in our driveway for the next 3 weeks…gotta love when DIY goes array!
How frustrating! I'm sure it's going to look terrific in the long run!
I sure hope so! 🙂
I have high hopes for it but mainly I am just looking forward to having a backyard again.
Chelsea, seems like there's always got to have a snag in something, right? Can't wait to see how you all do it!
Oh no! I hope the HOA understands that you have extenuating circumstances!
Sounds like the story of my life. I can't wait to see how it all turns out.
Desiree @ YourCraftyFriend