The Lawn of My Dreams

Have you ever finished a house project, stepped back, and thought, “That looks like it’s always been that way?” Immediately after placing sod, this is how I felt. It’s hard to explain. Obviously, the lawn hadn’t always been there. I had more around for most of the prep work that went into this project (more on that here). But at the end of sod day, I felt like “Oh hey, lawn. You look the same as yesterday. And the same as last week. And the same as last year.” Wait, no! You’re brand new! Anyway, either I’ve lost my train of thought and at some point you understood what I was attempting to tell you, or now you think I’ve lost my train of thought and my mind. The point is this: the lawn is everything I ever wanted!

We did quite a bit of research on the types of grass available and the companies able to deliver them. Did we entertain the idea of seed? Sure, for half a second. By the time we were ready to put the lawn in (last October… I know, I know), we had already suffered through a summer with the dirt patch. It wasn’t that bad because we were so busy tearing things down that we didn’t really notice it for a while. But now, we were ready. And we were surprised at how relatively inexpensive sod was! So we selected our grass type (Bolero) and selected our company (Delta Bluegrass) and ordered. Two days later, this truck arrived at our house at 6 am.

It was a Saturday, and we were ready to roll. Or should I say unroll?

Laying sod is a very rewarding project. In a matter of hours, we had gone from dirt patch to lawn! Check out our time lapse of the project here.

As for the details, it’s pretty simple. The delivery guy handed us a packet of fertilizer, which we sprinkled all around over the compost we had already put down. Then, you start unrolling. You develop a technique for meshing the pieces of sod together so the seams are less visible, but after a few weeks it’s impossible to tell where the piecing happened. And when you get to the end of a “row”, you sit yourself down, and saw off the remaining chunk of sod with a steak knife. No, really, you do… You can see me do this in the video a lot!

And there you have it: the lawn of my dreams. The backyard is really starting to take shape. I can’t wait for lazy summer days lounging on the lawn, sunbathing in the backyard, games of ladder ball and lawn bocce… the possibilities are endless.

And now for some before-and-after throwbacks. These photos were taken when we bought the house (the upper photo) and in November (the lower photo). Pretty crazy, right?