You may recall we have been hard at work in the backyard. I left you with our completed deck and promises to “be back soon” with details. Well, it’s been over a month since I’ve posted, and our backyard has been completed for a couple of weeks. We finished it just in time for my birthday at the end of September, and then we had two weeks of rain. Boo! But now the rain is over and I am back to share all the details with you!
Here is where we left off:
Lots of work to be done! Since we no longer had the stairs landing on the patio, we could make the whole thing one level! Yay! And since we were working off of the existing retaining wall, we could make it much larger, too! Win win.
First we laid out the space for the extension of the retaining wall.
We were raising the exisiting wall one 6x6, so we put that on and secured it with rebar.
My job was to drill all the holes with this fancy electric drill. Good times. :)
Next we turned our attention to the new top step. We had to add one more step to get up to the new height of the patio.
The new patio had to be one step down from the lower deck, so we had to raise the height on that end. So I determined where the level started falling on the old patio, and we pulled up all of the pavers beyond that point. That was the end of day two.
We wanted to fill in the space with fill dirt, so we shoveled up all the gravel under the pavers and put it in buckets and a pile on the driveway for later use.
The next day we got some fill dirt and commenced filling in the hole. We started on the completed end and built towards the deck until we ran out of dirt.
We pulled a grid of strings to keep the level across the patio while we were laying pavers.
End of day three, still need more dirt. It was a big hole behind that new wall!
Day four, more dirt, more gravel, repeat…
More strings, more pavering. :)
By the end of day four, we had finished all the way over to the deck. All that was left was filling in the holes with cut pavers. For that we had to rent the big paver saw!
I didn’t get any pictures of Mama with the wet saw as I was otherwise occupied working on the deck ceiling with Papa. But it looked something like this. Mama even stayed to finish the job while Michael and I ran off to dinner with his family. Thanks Mama! The patio is perfect! (And we’re never doing it again!!) ;)
Though I griped a bit about redoing the patio, it wasn’t as hard as the first time we built it. In July. In 100 degree weather. This time we had it easy! It was pleasant and beautiful weather. And we spread the work out over five days, so we didn’t get exhausted. Except for Mama, she works harder than me. :)
I love it now that it’s done. It’s super spacious and flat and gorgeous! It’s so much space I don’t even know what to do with it! :)
I’m thinking this empty spot near the door would be perfect for an grilling station/potting bench. I could use it for potting and then when we want to grill, it can easily be converted to hold all our grilling tools and provide useful counter space while cooking! :) I’ll put that on the project list next year!
While we were redoing the patio, we had to remove all the plants from the bed in front of it. So when the patio was finished, I filled in the bed with dirt and leveled it off. Then I put the hostas back as well as a row of Anthony Waterer shrubs. Then we added a few salvia and astilbe. It looks so nice with fresh mulch!
The lattice is also lovely. Papa installed that for me as a birthday present (along with the ceiling). And he didn’t even make me help. He did it while I was at work. Isn’t that sweet? :) It really finishes off the whole thing nicely.
So, how bout a before and after of that gorgeous patio?
Yay, patio complete! Thank you, thank you Mama!!
I’ll be back very soon to share the final photos of the lower deck complete with ceiling, ceiling fan and beautiful furniture. Stay tuned! :)
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