About 30 years ago, somebody dropped a ton of money into this place:
Inside: new cabinets - real wood. Cheap ceramic tile to ruin it.
The real money was the rear yard:
Pool and spa
Weed block and crushed red stone where there wasn’t colored concrete
The whole place was let go by the precious owners, who lost it to foreclosure in 2007.
I am re-financing now that I am somewhat credit-worthy - I can cut the payment, get a real fixed-rate 30 year mortgage. etc - not a ‘Foreclosure Special’ loan , which is what did in the previous owners. I will be taking cash out.
So:
Under the dirt, about 1-2" down, is the old rock. Now that dirt has built up, I have a sea of weeds. The drought is at least helping - most of the weeds are now dead.
So: I have about 50 square yards of this crushed rock around the pool. Yes, the pool does occupy almost all of the yard.
How could the weeds and dirt be removed and the crushed rock restored?
Even possible, or should I figure on just ‘paving over’ the mess?
The side of the house does not look like it had the crushed rock, but I will ignore it for now.
Any guesses as to cost to hire out the work? Sacto CA.
My reading of this is that you have a couple inches of dirt over a couple inches of stone? There’s no great way to remove and clean the stone in this case.
I’m in the Chicago area and my field is commercial landscaping, not residential. But for two days of crew labor and materials, the cost to excavate the top 4" of material and haul it off, then restore with 3" of decorative stone comes out around $3,100. It would be a little cheaper to put down 3" of topsoil and sod but that’d require watering and care. I couldn’t guess at colored concrete – not our trade.
Residential always costs more than commercial in my experience so maybe another 50% to 70% on top of that. On the other hand, we’re union so maybe you’d get better rates from a small non-union outfit. Probably too many caveats to be really useful to you but, hey, for what it’s worth…
I can’t imagine why someone would put dirt on top of rock, but the only thing I can think to do is to have a landscaping company come in and remove all the dirt and the rock and then, from there, you can decide what to do. Concrete (colored, stamped, plain, whatever), paved, patio blocks, new stone, grass, new dirt whatever. But I can’t think of any logical first step other than to remove the whole mess.
I wouldn’t try to grow grass in 1-2 inches of dirt. I don’t think it’ll be anything but a struggle since it’ll never have deep roots.
You won’t be able to pave over it, I don’t think (and the asphalt guys will tell you for sure), since they won’t be able to compact the decorative stone and dirt to get a good base. At least that’s my guess. I would assume they’d want to remove it and put down TB gravel.
Also, paving over it will add several inches of height to it, is that something that would work with your landscaping/house/pool?
You definitely want to excavate first. Even something like unit pavers requires 4-6" worth of base material. And that’s real base material, not random rocks and dirt. Concrete or asphalt would be more so.
The dirt/soil over the stone is settlement and/or breakdown of the weed block.
I’m not going to screen it and I most certainly can’t pay to have others screen it - I was hoping for some kind of magic bullet whereby vibration/washing/other(s)? could remove the soil.
Since the soil/weed are already at the height of the pool apron, excavation is probably in the cards.
No cute machine to scoop up soild, separate stone from dirt/re-apply stone? That was the kind of thing I was hoping for…
