A Work in Progress

Our main focus for the past month and a half has been getting our patio and sidewalk poured. Although I was going to post these pictures when the whole thing was done, I just can't wait any longer!

This is the "before picture". This is the old patio and a part that we had framed up to add onto it last year. After Mason was hospitalized, we couldn't afford to and so it just sat for a year. Lesson learned: when you feel like you have a major setback, something better is waiting for you.

One day in the middle of March I got ambitious and dug all of this out. By myself. 23 loads of dirt. Jeff was impressed when he came home from work. I felt accomplished.Then Jeff had to sledge out all the old concrete. Old meaning its a year and a half old. Maybe un-wanted would be a better word. He even broke the head off his sledge hammer. In the background you can see Jeff's laser on the tripod. He used this to shoot the grade in just right. Note the hill behind Jeff, we'll talk about that later. About two and a half weeks before we poured, Jeff and his friend, Mitch, poured and stamped a circle in the middle of the patio. I had really wanted a circle and my sweet husband went through all the extra work to make it happen (I love that man!). The circle was poured in a darker color of concrete so when it is all finished it will "pop".

We were originally going to pour the patio April 9th, but due to bad weather it was postponed a few weeks. During this time, one of my neighbors had a rock wall installed in her back yard. I went over and asked the guys doing it if they could come over and remove a bunch of dirt off of my yard. At the back of our property, our home builder had left about a 3 to 4 foot high hill/burm thingy. As you can see from the picture, Jeff had formed up some footings there so we could make a wall for a garden area. Behind this wall is still about 5 feet of our property that we are going to make into a raspberry patch. The problem was, there was still this huge hill of dirt there and I wanted my garden area flat. The wall we are building is only going to be about 2 feet high and I didn't want to have to hand shovel all that dirt out of my way. In about 30 minutes these guys had cleared out all the dirt and left me one happy customer.

Here is the patio all formed up just before concrete was poured.Jeff and Mitch working on the sidewalk.Jeff, Mitch, and Brian (our neighbor) watching the steps being poured. Mitch, my father in law, and Jeff working on the stairs. Jeff's dad was so sweet to drive all the way down from Rexburg to help us. Another one of Jeff's friends, Chilano, was also there helping and did the majority of the work on our patio. We had the rest of our patio stamped in a Roman Slate texture. The semi-finished patio. The curb you see on the right side of the patio will be my vegetable garden area.The next Monday Jeff cut break lines in the patio so it wouldn't crack.Since we colored and stamped our concrete it needs to be power washed and sealed. The color you see here isn't the color of the patio, but the release agent powder that is on it. On Tuesday (crossing my fingers!) Jeff and Mitch will be power washing it and then sealing it. The patio is supposed to be a light brown with a nutmeg color in the texture. I can hardly wait for it to be done so I can see the final product! Then its onto planting our garden, re-doing the sprinkler system (because our new patio was poured where some sprinklers used to be), building the block wall and getting grass in (since the seed we threw down last year didn't come in so well). All this has to be done before July 1 or our HOA will fine us. Wish us luck!