Patio Improvements

We have been busy here the past week! We (mostly Matt) have been putting in a new brick patio. When we moved in there was a huge deck. It was beginning to wear down and was not built very well. We decided that we wanted to take it out. We tore out the deck over spring break, but then got so busy with work, Henry's allergies and Matt getting a new job, that we had to wait to make any more progress. Here my parents and Matt are taking out the deck.

After the deck was out we had a yard full or dirt and leftover red rocks. Finally it was time to prepare the site. Matt measured out the area and marked it off. He then had to dig out the area to a depth of 5 inches. This was hard work, let me tell you! When I had the chance I helped Matt. There was a lot of rock underneath the dirt which took a lot of time. After this step we had a huge pile of dirt and our site all cleared out!

Matt then put down weed blocking material.

Gravel was the next step. The hard thing about this is getting it tamped down and level, which Matt did by hand.

Jack was a super good helper. He kept asking to go out and dig!

Then it was time to lay the bricks. This was tricky. When Matt first started, I could see that is was not even and not looking straight. Being the loving wife that I am, I told him we should start over while we could. We both went back and leveled out the sand again. Being the perfectionist that I am, I got down and started laying the bricks. It started coming together better. The challenge was making sure it was level in all directions.

We came back after a long day of laying half the patio to find that some of the bricks in the corner had settled more. This was super frustrating for me. I checked the level and it seemed to be ok. We finally finished! I think it looks good. Matt put down a final sand treatment to finish it off.

 Here is it today all done! We just ate our first dinner on it tonight. I am very proud of us, especially Matt for his hard work. This was definitely not an easy task.

We learned a lot through this project. We learned that next time we would rent a machine to level out the area. There are imperfections that I can see, but we did this all by hand and we are most definitely not professional masons. I am still so excited about it and it is most definitely an improvement over the yucky deck!

Our next task is to plant the tree thats still in its pot months later. We are going put it in the corner of the patio. We also plan on putting in another raised bed on the side of the house.