Best shot of Patio in Progress

Not finished yet, but getting closer. Sunday afternoon we built the landing, finished the walkway edge past the landing and semigraded the slope of dirt (soon-to-be-flower-bed) between octogonal deck and landing. We also put in a nice 6X6 timber to help frame out the newBarb was a mason for the first time, laying the second course of cement block retaining wall. We have ideas to finish off the landscape of that new flower bed.

New landing to upper deck

Standing on the rectangular patio - the walkway to landing to the upper deck. The next shot like this one, you'll see the finished new flower bed to the left. The pathway will continue on the right to the firepit.

The new landing

You can't see much of either deck, but a good shot of the landing and the newly planted small flower garden (3 hostas and impatients for color)

Camara rose getting bigger

The Camara rose that Matt and Nicole got me (Barb) for Mother's Day last year handled the winter just fine all snug under a mound of leaves and a plastic flower pot. It's got lots of new growth and you can tell it is excited to bloom again this season.

Before-old siding and new deck spot

Here's a shot of the back of the house. The old brown siding is ugly, and you see the space where the old shed stood. This is the spot for the first new floating deck.

Mike, Matt and Nicole (sort of)

We built the 1st of two floating decks using the Dek-block system. Perfect for do-it-yourselfers. Matt and Nicole spent the weekend. We had just started on the walkways and Matt helped to layout some large paver stone. I was taking pics of how the stone were set because we had to remove them and re-lay. In snapping this shot of the stone, I almost got the 3 of them completely in the pic.

Octagon Deck hole-working on deck floor

Almost finished screwing down the deck boards on the 2nd floating deck. For this one we dug down quite a bit due to the grade of the yard. We only wanted a one step-up landing instead of two steps. Typically, when building these Dek-Block type decks you don't have to dig much at all. But we moved a LOT of dirt. We are reinforcing part of the grade with standard cement blocks. once this deck is completed, we'll add a second course of cement blocks to retain the natural grade. WOW, did we move dirt. We're almost done!

Oct