ESP (Economic Stimulus Package)

Isn't it wonderful how everything in life has a way of working itself out? The idea for redoing my patio came during Christmas when I was complaining to my buddy, Jay, about the less than adequate boards put together that the previous owners called a deck. He said that he had started to get into something called stampcrete or simply concrete that you stamp out (kind of like kids in kindergarten). I was being nice and told him that sounded cool, but I was just boosting his ego. Who would want a concrete patio? Then, I saw the pictures of what he was talking about and it was exactly what I had envisioned. He, graciously, offered to come up to help me put this patio in. Psyched, I couldn't wait to get going on what seemed to be an easy project. Below you will find a slideshow of sorts of this project from beginning to end. Since this is a blog, I'll probably blah(g) between most of the pictures.

Oh yeah, the title of this blog is ESP, as the day we finished the patio was the day Georgie sent us a letter telling us he was sending money for this all important project. He's such a nice man. Why can't everyone be more like our president. The world would be a much better place.


I honestly thought that I could have lifted the previous "deck" right up and haul it out of here. We found that it was actually made correctly and it wasn't coming apart. It didn't take Amanti and me much time before I ran to get the chainsaw. These pieces, which are many, are still in my woods. Once this was done, I knew the hardest part was over...


Jaimelee and Alexis became honorary forewomen of this entire project. They made sure everything was done and done well.


What was I thinking? For everything that I've ever done at this house, I have always wanted to rent tractors to do the work for me. I did the above section in about two hours and thought, "Hey, that wasn't too bad. I guess I could do it all by hand." By far, the hardest manual labor I've ever done. The worst part about this, is that this was the one job that actually made sense for me to rent a tractor. Instead, I spent my April vacation on this portion. I can't tell you how many wheelbarrow fulls a 16' x 25' area produces. Let's just say I have my own little mountain range behind my house now.

The only reason why this picture makes the cut is because of the "step" that we put in front of the sliding glass doors. Jaimelee's friend, who shall remain nameless, looked out the door one day and wondered aloud, "Wow, I never noticed a tree growing right there before." We don't even make fun of her anymore because of this one statement.
Once the area was dug out, we got the professionals in... even though you wouldn't know it by looking at the water bucket level. Keith and Ron worked through some pretty heavy rain to put the form of the patio in. Not really sure what they did or how they did it, but it got done amazingly well. It's good to know people that know what they're doing.
Insert funny caption here.


Moving rocks is almost as fun as moving dirt. This was another super fun part of this job.



This was the only evidence of my brilliant idea of having a recessed fire pit in my patio. How cool would that be? Unfortunately, I came to my senses and got rid of the form the Friday before the pour. We decided that it would be much more versatile without a big hole in our patio, so it got scratched at the last minute. Oh well.

Jay decided that it would be cool to take the shortcut to get up here and arrived around 11:00. We immediately went to work when he arrived, went to bed around 2:00 and were both up around 6:00. Nothing like working with a good night's rest.
There's no time to rest when you're the forewoman.

Guess who was the last to arrive in the morning? Hey der Bob!

The crew.

Putting in $400 worth of color... I hope he doesn't mess this up.

I got back from the tool rental place to find the wheelbarrows all lined up. Not sure who was responsible for this, but isn't cute that four guys thought this would be important?


The forewoman had to call the higher ups to make sure we stayed on task.

On the other end of this screed is Bob.... you'll just have to take my word on it.

After Jay used some big stick to smooth the concrete out, he thought it would be a good idea to start a puzzle.

Looks of concern during projects are always fun for the homeowner. There was definitely a point in time we thought that this could end very badly.

Fixing our mistakes.

Not sure why, but my photographic eye thinks this is a really good picture.

See, I told you... there's Bob and he's working.

Is it just me or does Greg seemed to be nervous that Bob is behind him?

Right when we completed, the skies darkened and I thought for sure it was going to downpour and ruin everything. We found out that Jay is indeed a weatherman and accurately predicted that we were ok.

I could get technical and tell you what's going on, but it's more fun when I play the dumb guy so I'll just openly wonder why Jay finds it necessary to thoroughly wash a brand new patio.

We removed the form and I thought we were done. That's when I remembered that we still had to put the seal on.

Oh yeah, I forgot that the forewoman could do the seal.

The almost finished project. We still need to put in a step and finish the landscaping around the patio, but it feels so good to finally have our patio.

Thanks for all that helped. We really appreciate that everyone is always so willing to help the less fortunate out.