You know what the average temperature is supposed to be in Vegas right now? In the 80s. Is that what we had the last couple weekends? No! *%*$&#! When Monika and I moved into our new house, the backyard was just a barren expanse of dirt with a smattering of rock. Not very inviting, and we knew we needed to do something about it.
Being married to a soon-to-be civil engineer, pretty much the sky was the limit with what we could do. We toyed with the idea of pouring a concrete patio, but eventually decided that it wasn't what we wanted. Instead we elected to go with pave stones. The planning began and when we finally went to Stone World, Monika had a page of calculations supporting the amount of material we wanted to order. It was actually very funny because the guy who worked there was plugging away on his calculator to get the information. I don't think he believed Monika had done the calculations correctly. After about 15 minutes he gave us the numbers. Monika politely smiled and showed him the paper with a couple numbers circled. He had done nothing more than confirm her numbers. Ha! And to this guy's credit he took it in stride and didn't flash any attitude... Instead you could see his respect level jumping up a notch or two.
We ordered everything and had it delivered later that week. We had originally planned to build the patio back in early April, but what happened? Of course... it rained. We get about four inches of rain per year, but you KNOW when you need to do something like this, it is 100% chance of rain that day.
Due to our schedules, we had to wait until the past two weekends to finish the project. With the thermometer soaring around the 100 degree mark, the conditions were less than ideal... But with a lot of sweat, a lot of sunscreen, and a lot of help (thanks Luke!) we finished. I won't lie. It was difficult and not something I would want to do again, but after we were done, the sense of accomplishment walking across the patio was awesome. Below are a couple pictures that don't do it justice. These are from my phone, but hopefully I will find the time to get the high-res photos off my camera this weekend. As for the tent... this is only a temporary solution until we decide on what to do for shade.
Dimensions of the square area are 16' x 16'. Then there is a smaller area of where we put the grill.
--C
*PS... I knew it already, but this project just confirmed again what an awesome wife I have. I definitely won the lottery when she said "I do".
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