Backyard Beginning

Judging from many of my posts, you have probably come to the conclusion by now that James and I are OUTDOOR people. And in case all the fishing/hiking/running pictures haven't convinced you, let me assure you, WE LOVE the outdoors! Nothing is more relaxing to me than sitting outside at the end of the day with something cold to drink, and dinner on the BBQ.

Well today is PATIO DAY! Who would have thought a few years ago that this would be cause for such excitment?! We have been waiting since we moved in to get started on our backyard, and today is that day. So I guess I should have start with the before picture...took this one the other
day when we finished the yard work. Pretty basic really. You should just be able to make out the tiny excuse for a patio somewhere in there.

Actually this isn't the true before picture. When we moved in to this house there was a wood deck off of the mini-concrete patio, except someone who was really smart decided to use non-treated lumber when they built it. Yeah.......the Gulf Coast is humid, that poor deck didn't stand a chance, even though it was cute. Not long after we moved in several people put feet through it, the wood was so rotted out. James and his Dad ripped it out shortly before he deployed last year in the interest of safety. Here's a picture from back when we moved in to give you an idea what it looked like (sorry for the bad angle). You can just see the edge of the 10x10 concrete square though.


Anyway, so back to the NEW patio. Step 1 in creating our very own oasis was to make the patio bigger. It would be nice to be able to put a BBQ and a table on it at the same time, and still be able to walk right? As it turns out, improving your yard can be quite expensive, so extending the patio is the first project we are tackling. Eventually we intend to add a pergola over part of the patio, and some pretty landscaping, as well as a sprinkler system (it may take a while, but we'll get it all done eventuallly).

So today was the first of three days the concrete crew will be here. The main goals for day 1 was to rip out the old concrete slab, dig out the area for the new and larger patio, and frame it up. Tomorrow they will be actually pouring the concrete and stamping it (yippppeeee!). This would be all the concrete they hauled away. Who would have thought all of that came from a 10x10 square?!

This is how it looked around lunch time....

And this is a sample of the color/pattern we choose. I can't wait to see how it turns out!

This is where we ended on Day 1. Look at all that beautiful patio space! I can hardly wait to get our here and start enjoying it!