Our patio!

Last Fall we ripped out our wooden deck and dreamt of replacing it with concrete. All Winter we have waited and today we finally poured a patio! 

It must be said that this is a huge undertaking for us NON DIYers. We bought this house last Summer and it was lovely to not have to do anything at all to it. A contractor had bought it 2 years before and redone the whole thing. I have enjoyed this new home of ours immensely! 

The only thing for us to do is work on our backyard which we are both really excited about.  We have made some garden beds and now have the patio finished. We planted blackberries, raspberries, grapes and a trumpet vine last Summer and the berry plants are just starting to sprout! Our back fence is a hideous chain link with barbed wire on the top because of having the city water tower right behind us so we are hoping all the vines will cover the fence all across the back. 

The concrete truck driver asked if the kids were out of school for the day and I told him this was our school for the day! 

Grace couldn't help but get in there! She and the boys poured a little extra pad since we had a bit extra. She worked so diligently on this for most of the afternoon. They helped clean up too. Family work project! 

It is not perfect but we had a great time working together and learned a lot. We should have poured it more wet and we should have finished the stairs before moving on to the rest of the patio so there would have been less "rough spots". Micheal was pretty disappointed at first but I was just thrilled that WE DID IT! The plan was to stamp and stain it but by the time we got to finishing it, the concrete was too dry. We ended up with a broom finish.  Oh, well! You live and learn right?! 

You can see the two small garden beds in the back left of the picture and then behind that is the kids' fort. :) 

Progress! I am so excited to pull the forms off tomorrow, make strawberry lemonade and relax all Summer! 

Cheers to fun home projects!