Patio Furnishings

Our patio finally looks finished and complete! We finally did something right. I am amazed at how many people we can seat back there. I am just itching for a party! Almost all our furniture was pre-owned and then re-loved by me. Our pots came from our rehearsal dinner and the end table is war relic. Like always we could do more but we are gonna settle into what we have and enjoy. We are halfway through the summer and we both just wanna flop into our comfy love seat drink wine and stop fretting about it. After all that work we can sit and say "it is good." :) I imagine thats how God felt about humans when he made them - a wonderfully imperfect masterpiece. Enjoy our tour of our masterpiece. Marvel with us at that hand lain patio. All the aches and pains were well worth it.

Newly Stained Patio

We weren't really thinking of staining our deck - mostly I have been sick of painting. I don't know why painting is such a love hate thing for me. I love colors and the idea of making something new with paint but to be honest I am not a very good painter. I am impatient and hasty and sometimes I don't even tape - I just wing it. Needless to say we have some touching up to do all throughout the house. Sorry hub I just wanted it done. 

Laying a patio: Oh boy we're Jimmy Jacked

The last and final step (what step are we on even) is to sweep Quickrete Power-loc Jointing Sand into every crevasse and them use a shaker head (I call the Jimmy Jack) to force all the pavers into a locked positions. Then you wet everything down every 10 minutes for an hour and your patio is as solid as a rock! The only thing left to do was to fill in those edge pieces with halfzies. Because we had an alternating pattern we needed to cut half pieces for every other edge row. We attempted at first to cut these piece with various power tools. It turns out a good ol fashion hammer and wedge did the trick. Hub got so good he could split them with one whack. 

Laying a patio: Laying bricks is the easy part

The beautiful thing about laying your own patio is you get to literally touch every brick that goes into the ground. I think we touched each brick 3 times. From moving the bricks into the trailer, then into a wheel barrow to get from the front yard to the backyard, and then from the wheel barrow to the ground. Gloves were the most vital tool for this job. This is the final post for a 4 part series to get to patio bliss.

Laying a patio: I was not made to dig

             

So far on our patio journey we have purchased pavers see: Laying a Patio: Craigslist Pavers and made a level perimeter see:  Laying a patio: Why do we need a retaining wall?

If you are wondering why is it taking them longer than most...well this is for many reasons and I have come up with the following list of explanations for this endless project.

1. People on pinterest lie about how easy stuff is

2. We have no idea what we are doing so it takes longer to figure out

3. We are working with a very unleveled surface

4. The soil is clay based so hard to move wet or dry

5. We only have time to work on this every other weekend (if that)

6. Our adorable puppy distracts us and we cannot help it 

7. We need to eat every 2 hours so we have to take breaks for that 

8. rain 

Ok so enough with the excuses, here we are in the next phase - Digging and Screeding 

Laying a patio: Why do we need a retaining wall?

The night before we dove into patio laying we had spent 5 hours loading and unloading craigslist bought pavers. See our post Laying a Patio: Craigslist Pavers to see the insanity. We both felt the excitement of getting our pavers and seeing our dream of having a large patio area, we of course wanted to start laying right away. But our patio had to remain in the trailer for a few weeks until we had finished preparing the area. (of course we didn't do this ahead of time, we got ahead of ourselves but that is normal) We had to address the number one issue of having a patio - making it level.

Meet our Glamper

We have a new addition to the burrow estate. A 2014 Rockwood Popup Camper. Its our cabin in the woods on wheels, our get out of town fast mobile, our we can go anywhere with it burrow. I must admit it was a bit compulsive but we thought it out. We had been save save saving for a while and now we have a timeshare we don't have to fly to. In the area we live in there are countless places to camp within an hour away. I shouldn't even call it camping because around here it is considered glamping. And we are not ashamed - its posh and cannot really be considered roughing it. Let me share with you some of it's selling features

Laying a Patio: Craigslist Pavers

Before

Now that the grass is in we got the backyard "bug" and just want it all done. When we laid the sod we left the right side undone because we planned on eventually laying a patio.  So we spent a few weeks scouring craigslist looking for free or well priced used patio pavers. On a Friday night, we found a guy selling unique pavers. He lived about an hour away but he had 1600 patio pavers plus 400 edge pieces and a good amount of red patio clay called Red Breeze (you use for leveling the ground). We haggled him down a bit, unloaded our utility trailer, borrowed a friends bigger, more powerful truck, grabbed Subway and cash on the way out of town and headed to Denver.