Grading a sloped backyard took me 4 weekends, not the 2 days I planned for

I marked out a 30x40 area behind my garage in Columbus and figured a weekend of shovel work plus a rental skid steer would level it out. Turns out the clay soil was hiding a buried sprinkler line and a giant stump about 6 inches down, so day one just became locating and digging around those. After 3 tries with a laser level and 2 loads of fill dirt, I finally got the slope to drain toward the side fence, but it ate up four straight Saturdays. My neighbor said I should have just hired someone for $900, which made me wonder if I wasted my time, so has anyone else tackled regrading and found it took 3x longer than the YouTube videos promised?

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pat_hall8720d ago

Damn, that's rough. So after burning four weekends on it, do you actually feel like you know more about grading now, or is it one of those things where you'd still hire someone next time? I'm curious if the buried sprinkler line made you paranoid about what else is hiding under your yard, because that would mess with my head the whole time.