Everything Hurts, aka PERGOLAS

Watch this space - it's going to be unrecognizable pretty soon. I don't mean the blog itself, I mean the backyard. We are having all of the concrete torn up and the yard regraded. Most of the concrete is in terrible shape, and we don't love the strange sidewalks to nowhere but more importantly, the yard slopes TOWARD the house, which is less than ideal, especially when you're about to pour a new foundation. Demo on the concrete starts this week, and Jules is out of town, so that meant that we had to remove everything in the backyard that we wanted to keep before she left. So that's how we spent the weekend.

Just so you appreciate the magnitude of that, here is the backyard from the listing when we bought the house:

The brown shed on the far left and the blue shed in the side yard were essentially just termite colonies and had to be torn down before we moved in. But I fell in love with the two big pergolas next to the house. 

Another shot of the pergolas. Plus, check out our awesome realtor on the left! 

Another pergola shot (did I mention that I love these pergolas?) The brown pergola in the center of the yard also had to go, it was rotting and barely standing. On the left, a huge Lifetime shed.

So here's what the yard looked like last week, after nature and neglect turned it into a weed paradise, but we had our reasons (rationalizations) for ignoring the backyard. I'll get to that in a minute.

Hmmm, who are those people? I'll get to that, too.

So, since Mommalinda and I love the pergolas and want to replace them, we had to get them out of the backyard before the demo could commence. I was convinced that we just needed one person to stand at each corner, grab a post and we would lift them up and walk them to the front yard. So I texted my (buff) brother and asked if he and his (buff) boyfriend could come over Saturday. (And I wish I had a picture of them because they're a couple of hotties and I want to give them props.)

I can be incredibly optimistic sometimes. Here's what actually happened. We managed to move the pergolas about six inches. They were MUCH heavier and MUCH more top-heavy than I anticipated. At this point I realized, to my dismay, that the only way to get them out of the yard would be to completely disassemble them, piece by piece.

So we tipped them over. Is it just me, or do they look like dead AT-ATs?

Me, looking butch; Mommalinda, sad that the pergolas have to come down.

We started Saturday morning. We had to stop periodically because the temperature almost hit 90, and we have no shade back there. So we stopped for a couple of hours in the middle of the day, and that meant we were out there until the sun went down. And it looked like this:

Sunday, it was hot again. And we still needed to take apart the shed. Which we did, because we are awesome. Look at it, back there in the corner in neat little piles.

So Jules had to go out of town for a conference, leaving me to take apart the smaller pergola ALL. BY. MYSELF. Which I did, because I am awesome. And now the yard looks like this:

It's kind of sad. It looks like one of those abandoned vacant lots. And EVERYTHING HURTS. Because taking those pergolas down, screw by screw, and then hauling all of that wood to the front patio, piece by piece? WAS HARD DAMN WORK.

But - the end result will be worth it! And I'll tell you all about that in the next post.