Patio: The Before

I got it in my head a couple of weeks ago that we needed to build a patio. Fortunately, after all this time, Mike is almost used to my spur of the moment, ridiculously random ideas. I'm willing to bet that even he would admit that most of these ideas ultimately turn out to be awesome and just what we needed :)

Fast forward. Here are the before pictures:

Pretty much everything you see will be patio in the near future (fingers crossed). We need to remove pieces of sidewalk up to the taller set of stairs. The edge of the patio will be even with the bottom step on the taller set of stairs. We're obviously pulling out the two dead bushes (plus a tree stump you can't see in the picture). We're moving the rocks elsewhere...possibly lining the stairs from the driveway or to build up a wall that's already existing in the yard. We'll see.

Here's the brick we're using (1550 of them got dropped off in the yard on Saturday):

So, in total, the patio will be 326 square feet. Huge. I love it. It will be an on-going project, I think, for at least a couple of years. We'll use what we have for patio furniture for the time being, and I'll keep my eyes open for a great deal. I'm looking to make this an outdoor living room, so I want really comfy patio furniture. Eventually, we'll probably put up some sort of covering for shade, and I'd like some additional lighting.

I can easily see myself sitting out there during a rainstorm and taking pictures, or reading a book I can't put down til all hours of the night. Mike is excited to light the fire pit and listen to a Royals game with a cooler of beers beside his chair. Sure, we have different goals for the space, but at least we'll be together :)

Oh, and here's a pretty picture of a weed:

Apparently, I'm willing to crawl on the ground to take pictures of weeds now. Hmm.