Patio Patio

Greg's wonderful parents have been here for the past week helping us install a brick paver patio in the backyard.  It turned out to be a truly monumental task - we figured we moved around 8 african elephants (approx 40 tons) of dirt, rock and sand (not counting all the bricks and retaining wall blocks that also had to get moved).  And because our fence is so close to the house, there was no way to get any mechanized assistance into the backyard, so everything was done by hand.  

To give you a sense of how far we've come, this is what our lovely backyard looked like last week.  Note the lovely slope to our "beach" and the lovely pallet/retaining wall block steps into the house.

Greg and I spent three evenings digging out the dirt, because everything had to be made level with the pool deck, which required removing 6-12 inches of dirt over the entire area.  This would have been terrible in any circumstance, but the people who had lived here previously had the brilliant idea to put plastic over the entire yard, and then to put a 3-6 inch layer of rock on top of that plastic, which made the digging nearly unbearable.  Greg and I started digging on Wednesday evening, Greg's parents got here Saturday morning and we weren't entirely finished by Sunday evening.

Omar, however, loved all the nice, cool dirt that he could lay in!

By Saturday evening, we had amassed a significant pile of dirt in our driveway.  And this is after several people had come and taken truck/carloads of our "free fill dirt" away.

We don't have good pictures of it, but in between all the digging and the laying of the bricks, we had to haul massive quantities of paver base and sand and level the whole thing.  But after a day of dealing with all of that, we got to start laying some brick!!

And not too long later, I got to lay some brick on the side patio.  The main patio is 31'x17', but we were (foolishly) concerned that this would be too small, so we added an additional 10'x10' patio level with the pool deck on the side, to reclaim some of the area taken up by the pool equipment and make it a more usable space.

The bricks were a mix of three different colors, all of which had substantial both within and between the pallets of the same color.  So all the bricks had to be hauled out in the correct ratios, and then kept in piles so we would have roughly the right ratio throughout the patio.

This is right before we started laying brick for the main patio.  Laying the brick wasn't bad at all, but getting all the retaining wall blocks laid, and the material in and leveled was a beast.  You can see the mostly completed side patio on the right.

And after many MANY hours of laying (and cutting bricks) we have a patio!!

When we were at the Rock Shoppe (an awesome landscaping company in Michigan - I cannot recommend them highly enough), Greg noticed that they sold in-step landscape lights that fit into the retaining wall blocks and convinced us that we should really get some.  I think that was one of the smartest things we did - and Greg's electrician dad wired it all up for us!  The picture doesn't really capture the glory of the landscape lights, but it at least gives a sense.

And now everyone gets to relax and enjoy the patio!

This makes it all seem fairly straightforward, but it was anything but.  We were so lucky to have Greg's parents' expertise, Greg's super-human strength and my ability to take a week off from work.