When we moved into this house last August we had decided that one of our first large projects would be installing a patio in our back yard. When you build a home through a builder they provide you with binders upon binders of options that you can choose from. For people like me this can be somewhat of a nightmare (I'm a Libra - decisions take forever) but luckily Tim and I knew the two big options we wanted to invest in: a 3rd bay in the garage and a full-sized basement. While our basement is unfinished (a future project) it changes the elevation of the house quite drastically. When the house was completed our builder provided us with the most pathetic looking deck purely for access reasons (From the ground into our home is probably a 2 1/2 -3 foot drop)...it was a 4'x4' deck off of the back of your house that could only hold our Weber Grill. Here is a (iPhone) picture of the deck the a few weeks after moving in (while painting our kitchen).
We quickly realized that this would be high on the to-do list. Not only was it not visually pleasing but we wanted to use our back yard as a functional space where we could easily go in and out and enjoy the back yard (and more importantly have a place to host our annual 4th of July Party).
Tim has a special talent int that he can take my vision and turn it into reality without a whole lot of translation. However, we plan our projects so differently. I am extremely visual. Give me a Pinterest Board or photoshopped room with ideas and I'm good to go. Tim? He loves paper and pencil. He grew up with a father who was an expert at home projects (Woodworking and drywall specifically) so specific measurements and exact plans are his bread and butter. And let's be honest he is the brains of the operation. So after many, many, revisions we (he) came up with a plan and purchased the stone. We happened to stumble upon a fantastic Memorial Day Weekend Sale at Menards and went with the Wetcast Ashlar in Quarry Gray. I wanted something that was neutral and easy to clean and this fit the bill perfectly.
This plan was well "loved"
When our stone, gravel, and sand got delivered we both had a moment of "What have we gotten ourselves into!?" A semi showed up and delivered 9 pallets on our driveway. We estimated that it was around 15,000 pounds of material. We took a deep breath and got at it a few days later.
First it was time to measure out and gauge the grading of our back yard. We were going to have to raise part of the patio to keep it level with the section closer to the house. Tim measured this out with some simple stakes and string.
Now it was time to dig. We questioned our sanity multiple times throughout the course of this project and I didn't take as many progress pictures as I wanted to. This was due to the fact that A) Our backyard faces west. B) The temperatures ranged from 85-95 degrees throughout the entire project C) We had to carry all materials from our driveway to the backyard bag by bag...stone by stone. I will be completely honest with you - it was zero fun. However, the closer we got to the end, the happier we were with our progress.
Dead grass from sand bags
Special appearance by Mia