Larger patio to play on

While the painters where working on getting our house all beautiful, and Tyson was busy getting the fence up, we were busy with a couple other projects at the same time. This was one we could have done ourselves, but sometimes it's best to let others do the work. We had a bigger patio put in on the back of the house.

You can see in this picture that there was a small patio already on the house. It's that area surrounded

by that ugly iron fencing.

We like to do things outside, and we wanted a bigger area to play and to entertain. Really what we want is to duplicate what we had at our SD house and have it here at our CO house. Eventually the back will look a lot like this.

We eventually want a covered area, but that might not happen for awhile. Other things are on the list of to-dos first.

First thing we had to do was to get rid of the iron railing that was around the little patio. That is what teenage boys are for! Nathaniel had a great time sawing it off. We had to move some of the rocks too, that was a family project. Still more of those to move, but not sure yet where I want them.

After that was completed we called in our 'workers' and had them take over. They got it all squared off and the base prepped.

Then the cement came! The first thing to pour was the boarder. We have a little bit of detail around the edge and I picked a dark gray as the color. I didn't want anything to strange that might clash with a yellow house. The house is bright enough that the patio needed to be more muted.

Once the boarder was set the middle was poured. It's just the normal gray cement color. We needed to match what was already there.

Patio is poured and set. Nothing too exciting, but it will make this backyard so nice come summer. As you can see in this last picture, they are working on another outside project. We added a detached garage. The one connected to the house is really small. Two cars do fit in it, but not much else. And with 4 kids and a bunch of hunting and camping supplies, we need more space. That is what the new one will hold. So many projects happening at once! very exciting...and expensive!

Clearing the jungle and putting up some privacy.

One of the outside projects that needed to happen was clearing of all the over grown bushes and trees that lined our property. Behind us is a church, and while they are good neighbors, we still needed to get a good 6' privacy fence around our yard. When we bought this house there was an iron rod fence around everything. That's good to keep somethings out, but we didn't want all the cars that went by, and the church goers, to see everything that we are doing back in our yard. Kids need to play without people staring at them, and I need to just sit and read a book back there without everyone wondering if I ever control those kids.

I realized as I started writing this that I don't have any pictures of what it looked like before, at least I can't find any. To the casual observer, it wasn't bad, but if you are trying to take out one fence and put in another it was a lot of junk back there! We cleared out enough trees and bushes to fill our trailer up four times! Good thing it's free to dump it.

Here is what it looked like after some cleaning up.

Now that it is all cleaned up it's time to pull out the old fence and put in the new.

Once Tyson got this fence out, we sold it on Craig's List! Love getting money for something we would have thrown away. And since someone bought it we didn't have to haul it anywhere. They came and loaded it up!

I know, it's a beautiful fence.

Tyson put up a 6' cedar fence where this one use to be. I thought I took some pictures of him and the kids working on it, but I can't find them anywhere. This picture is of our big dirt pile which will one day be our garden, and behind it you can see the fence. Of course the boys are on the dirt. Boys and dirt are like magnets.

It's so nice to have a real fence up! Now we can be in our backyard and no one can see all of our doings. And with all of our doings lately everyone looks as they drive by.