The property that we now call our home in Mesquite occupies about 8,100 square feet. The liveable interior of the house itself is 2,413 s.f. We have a large two-car garage (625 s.f.) and a golf car garage (150 s.f.) Subtracting the constructed portion of the lot from the non-constructed, there is about 4,000 s.f of property that we can put to use exclusive of driveways and walkways.
When we arrived on October 30,2018, Pulte Homes’ contractor, Kokopelli Landscaping, had already put in place the basic street frontage landscaping required by the H.O.A. That included one 24″ box Mesquite tree, and twelve scrawny shrubs, arranged without any artistic sense in our front yard and a narrow strip next to our driveway…included “free of charge”, which is about what it was worth!
Our backyard looked like this:
Per our home building contract, Kokopelli had expanded our backyard covered patio with pavers and had installed a fancy Coyote grill barbeque station with sink and refrigerator. This $15,000 worth of “optional” work was included in our home purchase price.
After closing on the home purchase, we had Kokopelli erect a five foot, wrought iron fence around our backyard, so that the dogs would have a place to call their own, without having to worry about coyotes. That cost $9,000.
Recently, we had Kokopelli do some work in our backyard, putting in some mounds, large trees, some large shrubs, irrigation, and a 225 s.f. artificial grass “island” adjacent to the patio and barbeque station. Add another $12,000.
While we were under contract to Kokopelli for this work, we heard from neighbors about another landscaping guy who has a lot of satisfied customers in our subdivision: his name is Daryl Garlic. So, we decided to have him do the final phase work on our outside property; as we put it, Kokopelli would build the cake, Mr. Garlic will apply the frosting.
Daryl has an eye for the desert look. He’s a local guy, a deacon in the Mormon church, and has his own nursery a few miles up I-15 in Beaver Dam. Here’s some of his work in our neighborhood:
As it stands now, prior to Daryl doing his “thing”, our backyard and frontyard look like this, in plan view:
Tomorrow, Daryl is supposed to show up and unveil what he has in mind to turn our undistinguished lot into a desert paradise.
We’ve told Daryl that he has carte blanche to reorganize the huge rocks and move shrubs, as well, in his creative design. He might even move some of the trees…who knows?
This guy is going to cost us $10K to $15K for his work.
We’ve told him to plan a paver patio for the center of the yard, where we intend to install a pergola at some point (prior to Summer, we hope). That will be another $5K, I’m sure.
I may have to un-retire at some point, in order to afford all this earthmoving and landscape beautification. Drat!
(It’s a good thing that Charlie is doing taxes right now; we can use the extra coin!)
