Finished Patio!

Finally! It's time to put some pavers on the ground. I can't believe it. I was so excited to start, I didn't care if it was dark out. This is Monday night.

The pictures don't show much in the dark, here it is Tuesday morning. Since I got this, I asked Dr. C to fix my stove top. 3 of the burners don't light on their own. 

Because I have such a wonderful husband, he went ahead and fixed it. But of course just like always when we take apart something in this house, something it is connected to falls apart. He had to take out the igniter, but the screws were corroded and crumbled. Also, the burner part (of course I don't know what that is called) was all messed up (I also really don't know what was wrong with that.) He had to take apart the entire stove and spend an hour on the phone just order new parts. Since, the parts took a really, really long time to get here, this was my kitchen while we were laying pavers in the back. 

If you give a husband a job, he's going to have to take it apart... If he takes it apart, he will see something else is broke... When he tries to fix that, he will want to make it all like new...  

Tuesday night...

Wednesday...

Thursday afternoon...

Thursday, late afternoon...

Friday, Dr. C told me I would be cutting pavers so we can get the saw back and save money. Really? :-/ I thought I would be just laying the pavers and he can do all the cutting and get all his hands all rough and yucky. But, nope, he had to get stuff done and I had to cut.

Another view of Friday...

Mostly finished... I'm nervous about it being the right height once we pound it flat.

Aren't my cuts beautiful? I can't believe I was able to do it.

Another view. The step isn't done yet, but the main part is done.

Yay!! It worked, we pounded it down and it ended up being completely flush with the step.

Saturday. I'm so glad Dr. C was home to help again. Lots of cutting up here. He got to do most of it. I did just that little part in the front that you see.

There are a few imperfections that I know about, but over all we are happy with it. My hands and aching legs were not happy. But, now that I have recovered, I am happy. I squatted for almost every single one of those pavers!

All lit up at night.

Back Yard Progress...

This project has officially been my least favorite of all the projects we have done on this darn house. Here is what is used to look like incase you missed that post. It is not my least favorite because of the outcome, but because of the work. It is a darn hard job. Maybe I'm just forgetting the first 6 months after we got our keys, but I don't know... This was hard on my hands and my body.

Little C did some digging. The digging was very overwhelming because of how much dirt we had to dig out and it was very difficult to dig. Dr. C couldn't do any shoveling because of his healing shoulder.

Until...

Dr. C's generous uncle let us barrow his tractor while we were working on the patio! This helped us out tremendously!!!

Lot's of dirt!

Little C was dying to drive the tractor.

Pounded hard flat dirt and the beginning of the step. Almost ready for rock.

First, little C had to help build a table so we could use the tractor to dump the rock on. 

It worked great! Since the patio is up a level from the rest of the yard, we couldn't drive the tractor up and down with the rock or wheel the wheel barrow. Craig would dump the rock and I would shovel it into the wheel barrow and dump it where it needed to be.

Then I got to use that very heavy pounder again. That part is not so bad, it's getting it out of the truck that really stinks.

Finally! After all that prep work, (we started in December) we were ready for pavers and got our delivery mid February.

Stay tuned for the final stretch!