Reclaiming Some Yard

[PastorPaul]

The previous owner of our home did not follow the property line when fencing in the back yard (It's actually the side yard, but for us it's the back yard), because he thought a fence at an angle would look funny. We plan to move the fence to the property line and regain some of our back yard. The section gained would be roughly 100 feet long, about 1 foot wide at the front and about 8 to 10 feet wide at the back. That will help when we take some of the back yard for the two-room addition we hope to add someday.

At the same time, we are wondering what to do about the gravel parking area they put in for their RV. We've only used it for an occasional guest and overflow parking during our yardsale. We're trying to figure if we should leave it as parking, or scrape off the gravel and return it to lawn. That would gain us between 350 and 500 square feet of additional lawn. There is room to park three or four cars in front of the garages, and lots of parking along both streets that border our property, but the streets are very wide. Any thoughts on the pros and cons of doing this, other than the huge amount of work?

Either way we go, when we put the fence line in, we plan to gravel the area between the current parking area and the property line. That will give us room for building a storage shed, so we can keep our lawn care equipment, chemicals, and gas out there. If we reclaim the parking area as lawn, we can use that gravel for the storage shed area.

Hey, what can I say? I've got no money, but lots of neat ideas for our new home.

Pastor Paul
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"If they don't have woodworking in heaven, I ain't going!!!"

[deathwish2]

As to the gravel you have . . . if it's too much work to scrape it up, and you don't need the gravel elsewhere . . . 4 or 5 yards of loam should put a 2-3" cover over the gravel . . . a little grass seed and water will take acre of the rest. Altogether you can do it for between $100 and $200, depending on if you can get the spreading done yourself, with friends or by machine.

If you want to reuse the gravel for your other project, it will be a tough job to scrape it up if it's been there for more than a couple years. You may want to hire that out.

--Mark

When it comes to
woodworking and buying
tools, I always think back to
my grandfathers advice on
golf . . . "it's not the arrows,
it's the indian.''

[PastorPaul]

Deathwish,

You gave me a couple of ideas. I have a few friends who farm and would probably have the equipment to make fast work of the scraping.

Originally, I thought that your idea about adding the topsoil was the answer. Then I got to thinking, which can be dangerous. The problem with that idea is that the gravel already appears to be higher than the lawn. I don't want to have a big difference in height between the current lawn and the new gravel based lawn, especially where it would cause the lawn to slope toward the house.

Your suggestions combined, along with a love in our family, may provide the answer. I could bring in someone to scrape some of the gravel to the east side of the parking area, moving it to cover the lawn of that portion of my property the previous owner didn't include in the fence line. After determining what size storage shed I want to build someday, I'd leave a gravel section just a few feet larger on each side.

Next, depending on the depth of the gravel that was left, I would take out a couple of inches of gravel in a section 10' x 70 (or 80'), leaving some gravel base. If the parking area wasn't very deep when the scraping was done, I'd jump to step number 2. I'd frame in the 10' x 70' with landscaping timbers, one or two high. The ends would be a few timbers higher.

Now, if you are Italian you probably know where I am going. The next step is to put on a couple of inches of well-packed sand, followed by an inch or two of crushed oyster shells, lime dust, or clay dust. BINGO! One regulation bocce court. Then I can add the topsoil to area remaining around the court, or just leave it gravel.

Of course, all this is contingent upon whether or not the LOML wants to keep the parking area. Right now, she is leaning toward keeping it just for the one or two days a year that we have a yard sale. To me that's a waste of usable lawn. With all the other projects I have to get done, and the cost of each one, the parking area can stay as it is for now.

Anyway, here is roughly what it will look like:

http://webpages.charter.net/chalosi/boccecourt.jpg

Pastor Paul
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"If they don't have woodworking in heaven, I ain't going!!!"

[Grandad]

>As to the gravel you have . . . if it's too much work to
>scrape it up, and you don't need the gravel elsewhere . . .
>4 or 5 yards of loam should put a 2-3" cover over the gravel

The problem with this is that frost will cause the gravel to make its way up to the surface, which means lots of rocks for the lawn mower to throw later.

If frost isn't a problem in the area, I have no idea if rocks still move upwards over time.

[PastorPaul]

Granddad,

You make a good point. Fortunately, if we do reclaim the parking area, we have use for roughly half of the gravel that is there. Also, since the alley only goes behind our property (the rest of the alley has been vacated), I don't think the city would object to us using the extra gravel to level out and improve the alley. It adjoins the parking area, so there isn't any real distance to have to move the gravel.

Hey! Maybe I'll go down to our local lumber company and rental shop and rent a Bobcat. It's been years since I played with one of those. Look out world! The mad pastor is coming! :P

Pastor Paul
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"If they don't have woodworking in heaven, I ain't going!!!"

[pingj]

PastorPaul,
This is just a thought. Have you discussed you idea of moving the fence with you neighbors? I know in some jurisdictions if a home owner puts in a fence and leaves a portion of his property on the otherside of the fence, and his neighbor then maintains the grounds, after a perior of time the neighbor then becomes the legal owner of what used to be your property.
I don't know if this is the case in your area but it is something you should shcek out.

[PastorPaul]

I've already checked and that apparently doesn't apply in this area. Just to be sure, I've been maintaining our property right to the line and not just to the fence. Also, I have already informed the neighbor that I intend to move the fence. He says he has no problems with it and can't understand why the previous owner didn't do that to begin with.

The city engineer said that since two of my boundary markers are in place (NW corner and SE corner), and one of the neighbor's (the one that lines up with my SE marker), I just need to take a metal tape measure from the front marker to his rear marker and that will give me the property line. To find the back end of my property at that point, I measure 135 feet from the front marker and put my corner stake there. To double check it, I should run the tape from the the NW marker and go east 100 feet. If my two marks line up, I'm right on target.The neighbor's marker is back further than the end of my lot, because his property is actually about 6 or 8 feet deeper than mine, as are the rest of the lots on that side of the block. I suspect that has something to do with the fact that the alley is open behind us, but vacated and grassed over for rest of the block.

The survey company says I shouldn't trust the current survey stakes and should pay them $500 to $800 to have them make sure the stakes are correct. I'm going to contact the previous owner's widow and get the name of the survey company who did their survey. That should save a lot of headaches.

Pastor Paul
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"If they don't have woodworking in heaven, I ain't going!!!"

[Grandad]

>I've already checked and that apparently doesn't apply in
>this area.

I assume the law is the same everywhere in the US. In Illinois the law does not grant ownership simply for maintaining property. You actually have to take possesion. One example is a lot that has no access to the road, and must use another driveway for egress. The owner of the driveway still owns it, but must allow the owner of the interior lot to continue to have access, if for some period of years they did so. There is a difference between rights and ownership.

>The city engineer said that since two of my boundary markers
>are in place (NW corner and SE corner), and one of the
>neighbor's (the one that lines up with my SE marker), I just

The markers for my lot, and most of my neighbors, were moved by the contractors who did the cement work. The cement company employs nothing but the most ignorant people! New homes, and not one of them has the markers in the right place.

>The survey company says I shouldn't trust the current survey
>stakes and should pay them $500 to $800 to have them make
>sure the stakes are correct. I'm going to contact the
>previous owner's widow and get the name of the survey
>company who did their survey. That should save a lot of
>headaches.

If you are talking about the survey done so you could buy the home, you should have got a copy upon closing. If not, the title company should have to provide one, as YOU paid for it! Check your closing statement, I know you just moved in so hopefully you can find it.

[PastorPaul]

No survey was required when we bought the home. Since two diagonally opposite stakes were in place, and the neighbors corresponding stake, we didn't worry about it.

I spoke with the woman we bought the house from and she said our neighbor is mistaken about her husband having the survey done. It had been done by a previous owner. Last night I called the man who owned the house just before the woman we bought it from. The survey was done by the people he bought the house from. They are now deceased, but he confirmed that our two diagonal stakes are accurate.

I'm still going to check with some surveyors, but the fact that my mark agrees with the neighbor's, and he is fine with the fence on that line, I may go ahead and move the fence as soon as I can afford the extra materials. I'm going to use as much of the current fence line as I can. The neighbor just told me that the previous owner didn't cement the posts in, but just drove them in.

Now I just have to figure out how much of the fence to move. Probably the smart way is to just move the whole thing to the property line. I just have to put in two new corner posts on the property line, move the posts in between the current corner posts out to the property like (might have to add one new one to allow for the added length), put on the top rail and post caps, then re-stretch the fencing, and finish off adding the new fencing where needed.

The only problem is that at the front the gate is right at the corner and I am only about two feet off the property line. At the back I have about 12 to 14 feet to gain. Still, to have the fence right on the line is easiest to do and gives us more yard.

Pastor Paul
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"If they don't have woodworking in heaven, I ain't going!!!"