Patio Progress

Last week we had poured the concrete for our new patio.

It looked like this when we were done, and we waited a few days for the concrete to harden.

After it was solid, we were able to walk on it. We waited a few more days to put furniture on it.

We don't plan to buy any new patio furniture this summer, we decided we will wait until  next spring to buy anything. We might be able to find some good sales this winter, so we will keep our eyes open.

For now, we are using what we have. Tim's son Patrick bought us this umbrella table and chairs set about 5 years ago when we moved in. It works great for us, it's the perfect size.

The swing was given to us last year from Tim's family. I have plans to paint it in some bright colors soon.

Everything you see in the picture below came from garage sales or was given to us. (Except the dog).
I love free and cheap stuff!

A view from the screened porch:

You may have noticed we didn't get the privacy fence up yet. Since Tim is paying cash for all of the projects we are doing to both the inside and the outside of the house, it will take some time to get to some things. 

For now, Tim put up a temporary fence to keep the dogs in the back yard. The dogs had a blast this last few weeks while the fence was gone, they were able to go from the back yard to the front yard whenever they wanted (after the concrete dried). 

Here is a close up of the temporary fence:

Tim pounded poles into the ground about 4-5 feet apart.

Then he used a roll of wire fence and tied it to the poles with wire. It works great!

In the 2 pictures above, you can see little pieces of concrete laying all over outside the fence. 

After the concrete was poured and leveled, we were left with this giant chunk of concrete to get rid of. 

I asked Tim why they left all this concrete for us to clean up, and he said normally the concrete company would remove this after pouring the patio. Tim got a discounted rate on having our patio poured if he agreed to do some things himself. Removing this chunk of concrete was one of those things he had to do himself.

On Saturday morning, Timmy went to work breaking up the concrete:

He cut it into smaller pieces and moved them to a trailer to haul off. 

One day last week, Tim borrowed this tractor from his dad. He's going to use it to move the giant pile of dirt that was left in our back yard from the patio. There are some big holes in other parts of our yard that need to be filled in with this dirt. A couple of neighbors also asked for some dirt to fill in some holes and ruts in their yards. I think there is plenty of dirt to go around. 

This tractor looks like fun, I want to drive it!

I'll be back soon with more updates!