Spring Break'09 Project (finished last week)

Last year we decided to do a little backyard project on the patio that would take, "a couple of weekends- tops". Just jackhammer some concrete, pour a new patio, plant some stuff, and done, right? WRONG!
Remember this? It took place 2 days before Spring Break started, the week were to start the project. Lee wasn't exactly in a state to jackhammer a patio that turned out to be- I kid you not- 18 inches thick.

But eventually he did, and working as a family we lugged the broken pieces to a ginormous bin in the front, then Lee prepped the area for concrete, and with the help of Dad, built the frame.The concrete people finished in about 2 hours. We planted grass on the new dirt area, and put in shrubs which will soon offer a screen between the neighbors yard and ours.

Then Lee built a trellis and we decided to cover the lovely pink brick. Thinking we were professional masons, we got open stock stone and tried to put it up. Big mistake. It's an art, and Lee and I are definitely not meticulous, methodical, or patient with this type of thing.So it all came down, was given away on Craigslist in about 10 minutes, and we bit the bullet and bought some nice El Dorado stone instead. We like it a lot! Eventually the vine will grow through the trellis and hang down from the top and we won't have the pleasure of waving to our neighbors in their bedroom from our bedroom window.
Lee also built a gate, which I think he did a great job on!
Now we are trying to figure out what to do in this corner. But for the time, we are happy to not be looking at pink brick! The boys may miss the play structure that once stood here, and was falling apart,but they've more than made up for it with their PVC pipe swings, as evidenced by the dead lawn spots. Maybe next Spring Break we'll fix those!