A Day Filled With "Drahmah!"

The landscaping continued on Tuesday. Yes, they did manage to finally get the CAT moved. In fact, when I arrived home after work, there were two CATS in my yard - one in the upper yard, and another in the lower. The slope leading from the lower to the upper yard is toast - deep ruts, lots of mud, and if I ever had grass there, it's long gone.

The original CAT that almost fell down our slope and into the creek
is now sitting next to my driveway. There are metal plates all over my
front lawn and heading down into the back. BTW - DH says my local
law enforcement have been very efficient and the workers have received
parking tickets each day. My house is located in a "No Parking" zone
from 8:00 am - 5:00 pm Monday-Friday and the workers are getting caught. 

Apparently DH managed to piss the supervisor off so much that he walked off the job in the late afternoon, muttering something about "Anthony taking over". I'm actually not surprised. The original survey that Anthony did on the property was woefully inadequate, the land dimensions are larger than they first appear at casual look, and yes, we know how to use surveying equipment and leveling rods, so we can tell when something is being surveyed correctly. We're trained archaeologists and we've used surveying equipment in the field for years.

The metal plates for the CAT lead from the upper front yard to the
lower yard. You can just see the palettes of paver stones to the left in
the photo. 

The guys weren't writing dimensions down and they weren't holding the leveling rods correctly, so the stadia crosshairs in the theodolite weren't getting an accurate measurement. That resulted in their originally placing the paver stones at my door threshold 1-1/2" too high. DH insisted that they had to lower it because we need that threshold space to accommodate the extreme watershed that flows right in front of my basement doorway. Their inability to handle surveying accurately is also resulting in wavy lines down the brickwork of the new patio, and generally, not a class layout.

Look! There's another CAT down in the lower yard. This one is a Badger
brand (Sharon will be delighted). 

But it's also not bad and I like the way it looks as a whole. It still needs to be compacted and filled, and depending on what equipment they use for that, some of the wavy lines will be taken out by the final compaction. The eastern edge has a distinct curve on the edge, and there are absolute high and low points under the patio pavers, but I'm hoping that compaction will take care of some of that.

They are laying the paver stones out in a herringbone pattern and it
actually is looking really nice in the overall. Their lines aren't straight,
and that will need to be fixed as much as possible. I at least want straight
edges. Still, it's looking really nice with the castle walls. 

DH still needs to make up his mind about whether he wants a load of black dirt for the final layer. They will need to know that today. They also ran short of coarse fill and will have to bring back several more cubic yards today to bring the base layers for the shed up to our specs.

The large pile of dirt on the right was originally clean fill, but they've
put dirty on top of it with lots of tree roots, etc. DH thinks he'll have
them push that to the left of the tree to help level out the slope to the
creek in that section. 

Then the rain. We were supposed to get some serious thunderstorms and rain in the wee hours of the morning today. It was supposed to be up to five hours of pounding rain, lightning and wind. Fortunately, we got a lot of threat, but only about 20 minutes of serious rain. It was enough for DH to see how things were flowing, but not enough to ruin the layout. Any CAT work will have to be careful once again since we're wet on that tricky slope once more.

They covered the raw edge of the patio with one of our tarps to help keep
rain damage to a minimum. They really have no concept of how much
water gets shunted through our yard! Fortunately, the rain gods were
on our side last night and we didn't have much of a storm after all. 

So today will be interesting. I have no idea who will show up - Nick, or Anthony. I have no idea if the guys can actually straighten the lines in the brickwork, and I think I will recommend the black dirt to DH because everyone's tempers are on edge and it might help smooth things over a bit. Hope you enjoy the photos.

Today they will be continuing the brickwork through the end of the light
filler, putting more coarse fill just in front of where the smaller CAT is
perched (that's where the new shed will be erected in a month), and doing
clean-up work. I think they had originally thought the job would take
three days. It's going to be closer to four. 

I'm off to the pool, then I'll head on over to work. I'll have to work on my "day off" today, and getting my errands done after I get home from work really isn't fun, but I'm managing. Here's hoping you have a terrific Wednesday.