Progress may be a little slow sometimes but we get there… eventually.

It’s been almost 2 years now since we started our backyard renovations. I wrote about it here when we first started.

Since we do all the work ourselves things go slower. That’s the kind of thing that can happen when you are married to a man that is able to do anything, it’s really hard to hire things out because you know you can save so much money doing it yourself! The picture below shows the dirt being moved. Originally this was a higher level as I showed in the post when we first began and in the above photo.

How this area looks today.

We wanted to build a pergola in the area where we moved all the dirt. A pergola big enough that we could seat 100 people under it. When we have large gatherings (which happen several times in a year) we usually are sitting up tents and that is always a lot of trouble. To set up and tear down it takes several people and it’s just a hassle.

But… plans changed. Russell decided he couldn’t bear to have the pergola in the corner of the yard where we removed all the dirt, he decided it should be where those sitting under the pergola could have an optimum view of the scenery.

So we switched it to the left side of the yard.

This is a view of that side of the yard back in it’s glory days.

But every single one of the 3 cottonwoods we had planted has died in the last 19 years and the yard was in a sad state as you can see below. Rather barren.

So forms were built and rebar was put in place in preparation for the cement patio concrete pour over which the pergola will be built.

Putting a smooth finish on top. Looks like a good way to get some arm muscle!

Everybody has a job and spraying off the tools is an important one.

Edging the concrete to give it a rounded edge.

We wanted to stamp the concrete so we rented stamps that are supposed to replicate a boardwalk.

But before we did that we had to throw a powder dye onto the concrete to color it since we didn’t want a gray concrete patio.

This is one messy job. It’s most interesting how you do it. You just take a brush, dip it in the dry powder and then throw it onto the concrete, leave it set for 24 hours and your concrete is permanently that color.

These are the concrete stamps. You want to stamp the concrete when it is still quite wet so that it will accept the stamp.

After you place the stamp where you want it to go, you then tamp it down hard to get a good imprint.

That was all on Day 1. Day 2 was a repeat of the first day.

One of my favorite things was seeing them all working together.

I ♥ it!

And meanwhile, while they were hard at work I was busy juicing lemons for the youth camp we go to each year.  And in case you ever wondered, one hundred sixty-eight pounds of lemons makes a little over 7 gallons of lemon juice. That’s your trivia fact for the day. 🙂

So 7 gallons of lemon juice in the freezer ready to make delicious lemonade!

And the extra, fresh squeezed lemon juice I had left over was made into lemonade and served up to my hot and tired men. You have to keep your workers happy, you know.

Have a lovely day, my friends!