Baby...it's all jacked up!

O.k. imagine that line to the tune of Elvis' "I'm All Shook Up". That's the tune and line that's been going through my head for the past few days as I think about our yard. So here's the long story short of why:

We've been wanting to do some kind of patio out back for a LONG time. Originally we wanted to do a deck but had major sticker shock when we got a bid. Obviously it would be the cheapest just to do cement....BUT it would be too hard to do as big of a pad as we wanted because you'd have to do it by wheelbarrowing the cement to the back a little at a time. But after much thought we decided it was at least worth a shot to get some bids and see if someone would be willing to do that. So last Monday I called about 15 different places and found NO ONE that spoke English very well. I tried to get a rough estimate from them over the phone since I didn't want a ton of people coming out and giving me bids....but it was too difficult to explain to them exactly what I needed done because of the language barrier. So finally I agreed to let a select few come and give bids. There were supposed to be two that were going to come out that day....they didn't show. So the next day two more were going to stop by and their appointments were within a half hour of each other. Well, the first one showed up, looked everything over, gave me a bid that seemed pretty reasonable and I felt pretty good about him and since no one else had showed up, Matthew and I decided to go with him. He said he'd bring in a Bobcat to come dig out the sod from the area and the old, small concrete pad. I was worried that it would be too heavy and he swore that they'd done it a bunch of times without problems....so I ok'd it. Um, the ground in Lehi sucks! It's either too soft or too hard depending on whatever you don't want it to be. So in this case, it was too soft. The Bobcat totally sank into the ground and left tire tracks about a foot deep in some places, through our side yard. Yikes! I was really worried because this was just a tiny company that is basically working to put food on the table....not some huge company I could yell at and make them fork out tons of money to fix the mess they'd made. There's a little more to the story, but I won't bore you with the details. The end result is basically this.....they have agreed to fix it. They'll have to bring in some fill dirt and new sod and will probably end up making nothing on our job. I feel so bad. It's not their fault, but it's not ours either. I'm glad they stepped up and were willing to fix their mistakes. I didn't want things to get ugly and thank goodness it never came to that.....well, if you don't count what our yard looks like right now. ;) So hopefully by the end of this week our yard will be back to normal and we'll have a nice big patio in the back. I'll be patiently waiting...

These pictures just don't do it justice!