The Patio Project: October 17th-19th, 24th-25th

It’s a project that we have been kicking around for quite some time. Well actually since we moved into our house and noticed that Andre & Dakota were constantly bringing in dirt from the backyard. Now that the carpet in our house is quite dingy, we have finally gotten around to putting in our patio. It was probably a good thing that we waited, we changed our mind and scaled down the patio from 1000 sq ft with a huge fire pit to 300 sq ft with a chimenea.

It was actually started back when my parents were here. Jeremy and my dad built the retaining walls and stairs. From the time that my parents were here until last weekend we had what appeared to be a large empty sandbox. Andre and Dakota saw it as a big obstacle and preferred to run and jump over the walls instead of using the stairs. It all changed when we had 2 truckloads of dirt delivered on Friday. James stopped by (remember James from a few entries ago) and helped Jeremy even out the dirt. Early on Saturday Jeremy rented a tamper and compressed the dirt so that he could have a fairly level surface to lay the pavers. He Then he went back through with a level and finessed the surface. The next step was to figure out the pattern that I picked out. It’s almost random, not to uniform. I helped out by bringing the pavers to him from the pallet off to the side of the patio. Jeremy finished the laying and cutting of the pavers on Sunday evening about 8pm. We were both exhausted and amazed that the project was almost done. All that’s left not is to fill in the cracks with sand and tamp everything down one more time.

The Patio project continues...
Well...finally we have a finished patio. The last bit of work was finished over the weekend. The sand pouring, tamping&retamping, and brushing off the last of the sand is complete. We changed our mind about the chimenea and went for a square fire pit style outdoor fireplace. It even has a ledge to put our feet up on.

We love our new patio and we’re so glad that it’s done. It’s a fantastic outdoor space... even if Dakota tries to pee on it again. Until next time, Monica