Getting our Sod Tomorrow

I haven't been blogging much! Being a new homeowner is a lot of work! We are mostly unpacked and only have a few boxes left in the garage that need to come in. We have only been bringing in boxes as we unpack them because I didn't want boxes all over the house. We will officially be done unpacking by the end of this weekend! I'm still curious to see how much room will be left over in the garage with both of our cars parked in there. It seems pretty long so it shouldn't be too bad. My husband and I both drive smaller cars. No trucks or SUVs here.

My husband was gone all last week for work. He was in PA taking some classes for some certifications. I felt pretty safe being home alone in our new house. Having a security alarm and basically living in the middle of nowhere helped. When he was in the Army and gone a lot, I was always paranoid being alone. Especially during the year he was deployed. Every little noise freaked me out. I even got a dog before his deployment to keep my company! It's nice to have a home where I feel safe. I decided to surprise my hubs when he got back with a housewarming gift just for him. My dad went in half and we bought him his first legit tool box. Here it is!

Here's Sadie on her housewarming gift. She got a couple new dog beds so that now she has one on all three levels of the house! She's not spoiled....not at all :)

Back before we closed, we asked our PM if we could hold off on our sod. We didn't want to worry about watering it while we were trying to get settled. Thankfully he let us wait! We closed one month from today and we will be getting our sod tomorrow. They did the final grading of our yard today. I'm very disappointed with the amount of small gravel, large rocks and even trash that was left in the yard. Yes, I said trash. My husband and I spent two hours tonight digging up the huge rocks and throwing away the trash. There was way too much gravel to even attempt to remove it.We did as much as we could before it got too dark. There are also huge piles of sod everywhere. Who knows what's under those. I'm just glad we had the chance to do that even though I don't feel like it should have been our responsibility to do so. My neighbors told us that they can still feel rocks in their yard so we knew we were going to have to do something about it. I'm also a little upset that the ground had sunken in around our sidewalk and our step in the front. Our PM said they would fill that in today when they did our final grading. Well they didn't. They just pushed dirt up next to it to make it look like the filled it in. Thankfully we checked and my husband filled it in himself.

One of the main reasons we wanted to wait to get our sod is because we plan on installing a sprinkler system ourselves. We didn't get it in the mail in time and thankfully our PM was accommodating and let us hold off on the sod. We got several quotes to have a sprinkler system installed professionally but with all of the other expenses adding up, we decided to tackle this project ourselves. The materials cost less than half of the lowest quote we received. We will be installing a Lawnbelt system. Unlike professionally installed irrigation systems, it does not need winterized each year and turned back on each Spring. If this is something you have been considering, check out lawnbeltusa.com. I will be posting a blog about how the install goes after we get it in. Hopefully they finish our sod tomorrow. It's supposed to rain Saturday so we will be installing the lawnbelt on Sunday. We also plan on installing our invisible fence for our dog.

Here are some pictures of our final grading and our piles of dead-looking sod. The sod looks a little brown. I'm not too happy about that. The neighbors across the street had their's installed last week and it was totally brown. It already looks green though so I'm hoping we have the same luck.

Our yard is huge and this isn't even the whole thing.
There's another  50 feet behind me in this picture that already has grass and a line of trees.
They call it our landscape buffer. It's mowed by the HOA because it leads up to a street but it's ours :)