waiting for concrete...

The "concrete" guy was here on Wednesday. He painted us some neon orange lines in the dust -- gave us a better than expected estimate for the concrete decking around the pool, and, a totally outrageous and unexpected estimate to lay down the pavers.

I was willing to pay a bit to install the pavers, just to have the backyard completed so we could enjoy it, but the estimate he gave us was way off budget (yes, there it is -- the "b" word). So, yesterday, I spent some time wearing the latest addition to my hat wardrobe -- a mason's cap! :-) For about 45 minutes I walked back and forth from the driveway to the backyard, each time carrying 3 more bricks and laying them down on top of the now uneven and very hard dusty dirt. What a workout! Phew! I complained to hubby for a bit last night about the inadequacy of my workout, and, reminded him that we have a nice little wagon that we can dig out of the back of the garage that will help us immensely.

Here's a picture of the rough sketch for the random pattern and border I came up with.

The only really difficult part of this whole thing is removing and grading the dirt. So, we headed over to Home Depot last night to look at a mini excavator in the tool rental department -- it's kind of like a snow plow for dirt and looks easy enough.

The concrete guy comes back on Thursday, and then we're off to the races with this!