Project 1: Laurel Hedges

Throughout our waiting process to close on Ozzie, the 540 square foot house we just bought, Husband began crafting elaborate plans to make the house our own. The meant countless hours on Houzz dreaming up open-concept floor plans with simple, yet sophisticated interior features; running through different scenarios on which kitchen cabinets should go where; and meticulously planning window placements that maximized our natural light without staring straight into our neighbor’s house. However, in that time, the thing I heard most often from Husband was how he couldn’t wait to get his hands dirty and build. Before anything else could move forward on our remodel, Husband decided he needed to build a shed.

I have mentioned before that Ozzie runs on the small side when it comes to houses. With a small house also comes a rather small lot, giving Ozzie only 25 by 100 feet of land to live on. Space is at a premium around here. Unfortunately, the majority of our backyard was taken over by several 15 to 20 foot tall laurel hedges, making our cramped style even smaller. Before Husband could begin working on the shed, he NEEDED to remove the laurel hedges.

gives you an idea of the laurel hedge take over

On day 2 in our new digs, I was coming home from work and pulled up to my parking spot on the side of the road. As I opened the door of my car, I heard power tools coming from a neighbor’s yard. I walked towards the house only to discover the loud machinery noise was coming from none other than MY backyard. I opened the gate to find Husband with a certain twinkle in his eye, and this…

laurel hedges chopped down

Husband decided he couldn’t sit idly by any longer. He needed to do SOMETHING, and stat! So, at his first opportunity, he went out to the local tool store and rented himself a nice little chain saw. And just like that, the laurel hedges come down. I was gone only 3ish hours and in that time he was able to accomplish all this… I think it was bent up energy from living in a rental for so long.

(Side note: Husband is really good about letting me try out different tools, so we found a few innocent branches on another tree in our yard and I got to try my hand at the chain saw. I must admit… I thoroughly enjoyed the power I had at my finger tips.)

Treading knee deep in dismantled laurel branches, our yard was now entirely taken over by these pesky hedges and we had to come up with a solution to properly dispose of the evidence. Being well-versed in visiting our local transfer station, Husband came up with the genius idea to load the branches into a U-Haul and take them to the dump. Seeing as I was 15/16 weeks pregnant at that time, and still not feeling in my most tip-top shape, I was a bit overwhelmed by the prospect of removing the hedges by ourselves.

As such, Husband called on the help of our amazing, wonderful, and awesome friends and family. That Saturday 4 people (including another pregnant friend) and us tackled Project Clean-Up! In only an hour, all the branches were loaded from our backyard into the U-Haul and we were on our way to the dump.

Transferring the branches from the truck to the yard waste facility proved to be more difficult than we thought. But alas, after another 41 minutes of pulling and tossing the stubborn hedge into the dump, the U-Haul was all cleaned out! Now time to pay and get outta there!

As Husband drove up to the cashier, we had to do a double take on the amount due to dispose of the hedges… ‘That will be $100.50.’

Excuse me?!? A hundred dollars?!? For YARD WASTE?!?

The cashier double checked the receipt and said that was right… ‘1.34 TONS of yard waste at $75 a ton is $100.50.’

proof of our laurel hedge disposal bill

Let me repeat that, in case you didn’t catch it…

1.34 TONS! Of LAUREL HEDGES! That’s equivalent to almost 2,700 pounds! That weighs more than a baby elephant!

I couldn’t believe it!

But now, Project 1 is complete, and Husband and I have a backyard again! Now time to get that shed built!

our de-laureled backyard