Paulette

After many years living with an old deck and bumpy back yard we finally decided to put in a patio. We had contractors come and quote us for the work. We needed a small retaining wall along the fence and another one at the other end of the pool. Quotes were over $20,000.00.

When we hear numbers like that we start pricing it out. If we did the work ourselves we could do it for half that price. How hard could it be? We decided to do 1/2 this year and 1/2 next year.

Here is the before:

When the materials arrived I was overwhelmed. I felt sure we had ordered far too much. Oh well, maybe we are doing the whole patio this year.

We recruited the kids to help. Here we are dismantling the old deck. It didn’t take much to knock it down. It was rotting away.

Next came the big dig. We had a dumpster and filled it with earth or whatever that was we dug up.

We spent every evening and a few weekends getting this 1/2 of the patio done. Yes we did use up all the materials in the driveway. That means we need that much again next year.

Oh my gosh I have to do all this again.