Patio Progress

Our back patio used to be a small pad flanked by a hill that was covered in poison ivy and morning glory vine (2 things that I am highly allergic to, by the way). And a place that I dreaded spending time (and drag playing children out of said PI and MG). I have tried to find pictures, but it appears that I managed to avoid taking pictures of the mess. The only one I can find is from this summer from when we hung the hammock that the girls picked out for Father's Day. And it doesn't show the hill, just part of the cement pad*:

Here you see part of the ugly pad and some of the gravel from where we are expanding the patio surface. This is what you see to the left of the back sliding glass door. The horrid hill is to the left. To get rid of the hill, last summer my dad built a retaining wall and put in drainage and we needed13 tons of gravel. Lets just say that moving all that gravel from the driveway to the back of the house and up the hill caused some major burnout. By the end of the summer I couldn't find anyone that was willing to let me pay them to do the job. So the project came to a halt.

Then came the spring. One of the wettest and muddiest ever. And a pregnant me, a hubby with a torn disc, a BIL with a bad attitude, and again... no one willing to move gravel. So I lived with a messy weed bed of gravel, surveying stakes, kids using construction supplies as balance beams, and just hoped that no one broke a neck or lost an eye.

My dad finally found the time, the man power and got this thing moving again. Starting last week gravel and limestone fines got moved (by my dad's Kawasaki Mule... which made a huge difference), things got compacted using a Vibratory Tamper (which somehow sounds obscene) and after some major anxiety over stone (I went to order stone and decided that I didn't really like what I went there to order and had to start over with plans, patterns, etc.) the supplies were delivered and we have PROGRESS**.

Avery spent hours supervising. Nothing could tear her away from the action.

"You can put those fines right here."

We still have some cuts that need to be made, last stones to be set and then the sanding. But we are getting close! And it looks like a real patio.


And the girls are having a blast playing on it this afternoon.


Neat, huh?

*But if you've been here, you know...
** If you are wondering about the giant blue tarp... it's been cold and rainy but we decided to move ahead anyway. If we waited for nicer weather, I would likely have been doing this post next August.