DIY Day 1: Dirt is cheap? Not mine.

Today I learned more about dirt than I ever wanted to know. And the surprising thing I’ve learned is that it’s not cheap.

We spent $225 to rent a Bobcat for one day. My husband spent Wednesday cutting into the hill in our backyard. A pile of dirt later we realized that our original plan to remove the dirt wasn’t going to work.

Plan A? Use the Bobcat to take bucket loads of dirt down the street and dump it into an empty lot.

With approximately 5 dumptruck loads of dirt in our backyard Plan A would now take days.

Plan B? Call someone to haul the dirt away.

We’ll call that someone “Mike”. Mike came by to check out our dirt and give us an estimate. Lucky me, my husband had just left to return the Bobcat so it was up to me to go over the details with Mike. The only detail I was concerned with was the price. I didn’t care how or where he took the dirt, I just wanted it gone.

Mike mumbled “twelve…dred..” My ears didn’t quite hear what he said.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” I asked.

“TWELVE HUNDRED” he said.

An awkward silence ensued as I waited for him to laugh to show he was joking. He didn’t laugh.

“That’s not in our budget. I’m sorry we won’t be able to do that.” I said.

Mike then mumbles something about gas being $3.50 a gallon (it’s $3.29 here for diesel), there are dump fees etc…

He asks me to call my husband to see what he thinks. I do and my husband says to tell we can pay $500 and that it’s. Great. Just great. I am TERRIBLE at negotiating.

I told him we can’t afford to pay more than $500 for the job. It was not an expected expense and it’s coming out of the extra money we’ve allowed for the project. He left but I had a feeling we would hear from him again.

One hour later the phone rings. It’s Mike again asking to speak to my husband. He has found another place to dump the dirt and could do it for $650.

My husband told him we were looking into other options and might give him a call in a few days, but reiterated that we could only spend $500. Then the guy started to bargain hard. He has been looking for jobs, needs the money etc… I felt bad. But we knew we were being reasonable with our request. We had gotten another quote on the phone from a grading company that charges $100 a truckload.

I truly feel for him. It’s Christmas time, he has a family that he supports with his own business and I’m sure would like to buy presents for them. I’m guessing he drove into my neighborhood, took one look at the houses and decided that he would give us a *special* rate. I don’t blame him for trying to overcharge us because we are in a nice neighborhood; he’s not the first one and he won’t be the last.

But what he didn’t realize is that homes in our neighborhood range from the high $100,000’s- $1 million. And our home is nowhere near close to being the highest priced. Because he assumed that we were wealthy because of our neighbors; he lost a potential client. Our maybe he just thought I was a clueless female that couldn’t do a little math.

The good news? The digging is done. My husband was able to get work done with the Bobcat in one day and we won’t need to rent it for another day.

Total project cost so far? $225.

Next up: Day 2- Now what to do with all this dirt?