Have a Cup of Concrete

With the advent of our new front stairs, we realised that we had a problem. It was impossible to reach the stairs from our new front gate without stepping through mud, since we've had quite a bit of rain lately.

So we decided to make the front yard a little more liveable, while spending zero money.

Daniel got the ultra fun job of making a start on the mound of hardened clay just next to the stairs...

With the goal being to spread the dirt around so the front yard was more level.

And later, as the fence was taking shape, I took over the role of chief dirt mover.

It involved a lot of this.

And it was the most exhausting thing I've done in a really long time. Considering how much dirt we removed by hand from our last house's backyard, I marvel at our stamina back then!

Allie took over her traditional role of trying to protect what was left of the dirt pile.

Just like old times.

As a cheap and easy alternative to actually investing in paving the front yard right now, we decided to scavenge all of the pieces of concrete lying around that we've somehow managed to accumulate as we've gone about raising this house. We heaved them all onto the back of the ute, trundled it down to the front yard, and heaved them all back out again, attempting to lay them as evenly as possible.

We didn't really succeed in creating an even surface, but it's better than mud!

A couple of days later we scavenged a bit more concrete from the original under-the-house laundry slab, and added it the yard.

And we found a nice big chunk to sit at the bottom of the stairs. It was ridiculously heavy. Unfortunately I didn't leap out of the way fast enough as it fell to the ground a few moments earlier than expected, and it took out some of my skin on the way. No serious harm done though, and they do say "no pain no gain"!

And here's the extremely attractive view (of both the yard and the freshly puttied fence) from the top of the stairs

We plan to get some small rocks to fill in the gaps between the pieces of concrete so we can use the front yard as a sort of patio. It won't be smooth or even, but it will be an improvement on mud, and since we're not ready to spend the energy paving it properly, this will definitely fulfill the purpose admirably for now!

Guess what's next? Those little white putty dots are a clue...