DIY Disaster

Two Saturdays ago Spencer and I rented a two man auger to dig about 13 fence post holes in our yard. We had a cedar fence that blew over due to rotted posts. The fence was much needed when we had a dog and even now with young kids and a steep drop off to a creek on our property. Spencer struggled to dig out the concrete footings in the original post locations, so we decided we'd just move the posts.

With Lucian's back not up to par, Spen and I took on the task. We rented from Home Depot and the girl who helped us said I was the only woman she's seen come in to rent one. Maybe that should have been my first clue. We had snapped lines and plotted all our points and were ready to go. Spen and I got started with the heavy beast and dug for a while figuring out the throttle and how to get the darn thing to dig. I still don't understand how exactly it happened, but we got it stuck. It would not turn or budge for the life of us. My hopes of digging all 13 holes in 4 hours were dashed and I quickly shifted to hoping to return the thing in 4 hours and calling a professional. Not even that happened.

We spent the whole time digging the 3 foot auger bit out of the ground by hand. It was terrible. We even left it in the ground overnight because we were too exhausted to finish on Sat.

Sunday morning we triumphed (if you can call it that) and got the darn thing out. Lucian thought we might try another hole, but the fear of another day of digging by hand was too paralyzing. While searching online, I've come across diggers like this. I hope a visit from one is in my near future.