Tuesday, May 24, 2011

When I left you last...




...the patio had been torn out.





Then the windows were dug out.




Our crumpled window wells.


The weeds got cleared. Wahoo!



Work on the second tier on the patio wall.






Progress on the future basement entrance.




Prepping for concrete.







The basement entrance nearly done.








We got really handy with the inverted-nozzle spray paint gun. I looooove that thing! I should have taken a picture of it. It was a highlight of the backyard project.









Thursday, May 5, 2011

Backyard Demolition

To say that the last day and a half have been a little crazy is an understatement. Yesterday at lunchtime, the company we decided to have do our backyard (just last week) called and because of some scheduling needs asked if they could get started right away. I said sure! They arrived less than an hour later and definitely got started.




The first thing for them to do was to break apart the paver walls that weren't staying. They had been glued together by the previous homeowner, but they were able to salvage almost all of them! There is another paver wall almost built as I'm writing this. I'll show that in my next post.





This is the patio before:





We decided in the end to break out the whole thing for a few reasons. First, see the level of the yard? Those window wells should not be concreted in. Also, The patio shape didn't seem to fit the yard and the stairs had no landing at the top (not to code). We are planning to add a basement door at some point too.







The next few pictures are of the patio being demolished. 15 min and everything but the stairs was out.











A couple hours later and the stairs were out. The massive stairs.






And last night we had this:




And this....their access to our backyard. :)