This has been a hot summer leaving me wondering why I ever moved back to the South and questioning if there is any good reason to go outside unless I am walking directly to the pool during summer. So how Marc talked me into actually doing manual labor in the middle of a hot summer day, not once, but twice, I am still pondering. The pride in the finished product is the only thing keeping me from never stepping foot outside again and from refusing to ever enter Lowe's again. For now I can claim that my sunburn and muscles are still damaged from this project so we have to wait a while longer until we think of anything else to do. Not to mention this last month has really completed our backyard and we can't think of much we want to change :)
This all started out with a trip to Lowe's to pick up some pebbles for the walkway to the backyard. The walkway is made up of dirt and a light layer of red rocks and tends to collect water when it rains so I wanted to put in a thick layer of pebbles to make it look a little cleaner. While we were at Lowe's picking up these pebbles some patio stones caught Marc's eye. Once we put the picnic table in the backyard the grass underneath it died immediately and he had been wanting to put a patio underneath to make it look nicer. The plan was to wait until it cooled down but all of a sudden instead of going home with a few bags of pebbles we were going home with about 100 bricks, patio sand, and a flattening tool. We moved the patio table dug up all the dead grass and started flattening out the area and measuring. At this point we realized we had calculated wrong for patio pattern and needed more bricks. So we laid down what we had and then returned to Lowe's to pick up a second batch of bricks and to pick up the pebbles we had originally come for. In the end it was a relatively "easy" project that produced a result we were quite proud of. But the fact that it was at least 100 degrees out, there is no shade in our backyard, and those bricks have to be carried one by one into the backyard tainted my definition of easy. Not to mention the hassle we had trying to get rid of the dirt we had dug up. We broke our trashcan loading it into the trash can, found out the trash won't pick up dirt, and ended up spending the next afternoon throwing it over our very tall back fence one shovel full at a time. Despite all that, here are the results of one of our oh so "easy" projects:
Oh and here is the project we actually intended to do:
After being so happy with the patio underneath the picnic table we decided that the next weekend we were in town we would put one underneath the grill, where again all the grass had died. It was such an "easy" project why not right? Plus Marc had somehow forgotten my very stern claim that I was doing no work in the backyard until it was cool out ;) So this weekend we headed back to Lowe's picked up the same patio stones and a few extra bags of pebbles. We had decided we liked the pebbles so much we wanted to place them around the air conditioning units. To our surprise we had gotten grass to grow there but found that it looked a little unhealthy and was hard to maintain, so we decided to dig up the grass we planted and lay down pebbles for a cleaner look.
So after many sore muscles, way too much sweat, a few good sunburns, many hours, and actually not too much money we have completed our backyard and are so happy with the results. And once it gets a little cooler out we will make sure to sped many relaxing hours out there grilling out using the awesome grilling skills Marc was taught by the grill master himself, my dad. There is something so much more satisfying about the fact that we did it all ourselves, I cannot wait to spend time out there. Also I have decided that instead of continuing on in science I will be applying to work for HGTV. Just kidding ;)
The finished Product:
And here are a few pictures of Romo and our little house guest Otis enjoying the backyard a few weeks ago :)
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